


The Hole In My Head

by maighealavellan



Series: No Light [1]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst and Feels, Developing Relationship, Enthusiastic Consent, Eventual Romance, Eventual Smut, F/M, Gen, Gendermeh Protag, Multi, Slow Build, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-02
Updated: 2019-01-12
Packaged: 2019-10-03 04:07:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 38
Words: 90,860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17276789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maighealavellan/pseuds/maighealavellan
Summary: Caught between worlds, Dalish mage Ilaana Lavellan is finding her way between the humans she has never known and the Thedas that now rests upon her shoulders.Knowing no one in her own clan ever cared to understand her, the last person she expected to try is the people of the human Chantry's fledgling Inquisition. But someone watched over her after the cataclysm at the Temple of Sacred Ashes that left her marked by a mysterious power--an apostate elven mage, who knows the secrets of the Fade. With everything Thedas knows about spirits, the Fade, and magic itself hanging in the balance, Ilaana is drawn to Solas, who knows far more than anyone else seems to.They say love is blind, but Ilaana keeps seeing hints; she recognises that Solas is more than he seems, and with the fate of her people at stake, learning his secrets might be the only chance to save him from himself.





	1. There is a Hole

There is a hole.

I feel the absence in my mind, like the edges of thought have been carved away from one place where there is something I should know. Something I did know, something that was mine, and now it’s gone.

Before anything else, that is what I feel as my eyes open, and the burning orange light of torches sears them, and the smoke draws water down my cheeks as if I can put out their fire with my tears. My knees ache, and there are shapes around me, four shapes with swords drawn.

Someone is speaking, and my hand—

My left hand has a crack in it, and green light pours out from the crack, spilling across my palm. My hands are bound together with manacles. They clank when I move. The crack in my left palm—it ripples like the sky does in the height of winter, on a clear night, a cold night, and it is the same colour. Green like veridium. Rippling from my palm, and it feels—

Somewhere there is a soft voice, urgent and low, but then it breaks off and whoever it belongs to is gone, and in its place there is the sound of metal clanking, and footsteps coming closer.

Not closer, here.

I squint up at the person. A Seeker. Cassandra, I think. Her face is nearly coming apart with rage, and behind her is another Chantry person, hooded in purple, her red hair glinting in the torchlight.

The Seeker nearly spits at me. “Tell me why we should not kill you now. The Conclave is destroyed. Everyone who attended is dead. Except you.”

“What do you mean everyone is dead?” The hole is there. I should know this. I should remember this. This is what is missing. Why can’t I remember?

The Seeker’s strong hand grabs my wrists, thrusting my hands in front of my face. “Explain this!”

“I…can’t.”

I have no idea what this is on my hand, but it feels—there is a through-line, a passage, a…something. Once as a child I stacked leaves on top of each other until they were thick and pushed a sharp stick through the centre. This thing on my hand feels like the hole made in those leaves. I cannot explain it. It feels… _through_. Movement, direction, but the Seeker is still snapping questions at me.

“What do you mean, you can’t?”

“I don’t know what that is or how it got there,” I stammer.

“You’re lying!” The Seeker’s arm rushes back, but the redhaired shem in purple stops her.

“We need her, Cassandra.”

The Conclave. The very thing I was sent here to observe and it’s somewhere in that hole where no memory gets through. There were so many people there, from the Chantry, the mage circles, the templars, representatives from all over Thedas there to discuss peace and—

“I can’t believe it,” I say. It barely occurs to me that I’m speaking aloud. “All those people. Dead.”

The redhead is listening, even if the Seeker isn’t. Her voice is far more gentle. “Do you remember what happened? How this began?”

I close my eyes tight, grasping around the edges of the hole in my memory. _Panting breath. Feet churning. Moving. Something following, hungry, chasing. A form, bright and glowing, a hand outstretched._

“I remember running,” I say, reaching for more, but nothing else comes. “Things were chasing me. And then…a woman.”

“A woman?” The redhead asks with genuine interest.

“She reached out to me, but then—”

The Seeker, Cassandra, breaks in. “Go to the forward camp, Leliana. I will take her to the rift.”

Leliana nods and leaves without another glance at me.

“What did happen?” I ask the Seeker. I need to know what happened.

“It will be easier if I show you.”

Cassandra pulls me to my feet, unlocking the manacles that bind my wrists with another clank of the metal. She wraps a finely-made blue rope around them in their place, almost before I have a chance to feel the sudden chill of air against my skin.

She leads me down a long corridor and up a flight of stairs, into the belly of a chantry. I must be in Haven.

When she pushes open the doors to outside, I squint in the sudden brightness, looking up into a cloudy sky, where there is—

A hole.

A hole that dwarfs the one in my memory. Clouds swirl around its centre, crackling with the same green that shines out from my hand. From the hole, rocks—Fade rocks, sweet Creators—fall or hang suspended in that maelstrom.

A funnel of green energy pulses below it. It is alive and moving, and I can’t look away.

“We call it the Breach,” says Cassandra. “It’s a massive rift into the world of demons that grows larger with each passing hour. It’s not the only such rift, just the largest. All were caused by the explosion at the Conclave.”

“An explosion can do that?” I blurt.

“This one did. Unless we act, the Breach may grow until it swallows the world.” Cassandra takes a step forward, face grim.

Almost as if she summoned it, the Breach flares and grows larger, and I _feel_ it. It shoots through the crack in my palm at the same time, rays of green light pulsing, reaching into my wrist, my arm, crunching my muscles.

I drop to my knees, crying out.

Cassandra looks down at me. “Each time the Breach expands, your mark spreads, and it is killing you. It may be the key to stopping this, but there isn’t much time.”

“You say it _may_ be the key. To doing what?” I stare at the mark on my palm as if doing so can make it tell me.

“Closing the Breach. Whether that’s possible is something we shall discover shortly. It is our only chance, however. And yours.”

“You still think I did this? To myself?” I can barely make sense of any of this.

“Not intentionally,” answers Cassandra curtly. “ _Something_ clearly went wrong.”

“And if I’m not responsible?” For the first time, defiance flares in me. I didn’t do this. I couldn’t have, hole in my memory or not. Reflexively, my gaze darts again to the Breach.

“Someone is,” Cassandra says. “And you are our only suspect. You wish to prove your innocence? This is the only way.”

It seems I have no choice. And even if I wanted to run, could I? The Breach—I can feel it. It’s like an itch against the inside of my skin. It feels hungry the way a tornado feels hungry. It is mindless, but it will destroy everything it touches.

“I understand,” I hear myself say.

“Then…” Cassandra shifts her weight to her left foot, hand on the hilt of her sword.

“I’ll do what I can. Whatever it takes.”

Cassandra gives me a short, satisfied nod and pulls me to my feet. She leads me through the village of Haven, and everyone— _everyone_ —stares at me. Not curious stares. Certainly not friendly stares. A man spits, muttering something I only hear because I know the vowels too well not to—he said _knife ear_.

“They have decided your guilt.” Cassandra seems to notice my incredulity, or perhaps she is surprised a Dalish elf is affected by the contempt of humans. “They need it. The people of Haven mourn our Most Holy, Divine Justinia, head of the Chantry. The Conclave was hers. It was a chance for peace between mages and templars. She brought their leaders together. Now, they are dead.”

Grief pulls at the edges of her words. This has hurt her, deeply. Not the way the shemlen are staring at me, but the death of their Divine. I imagine how I would feel if an explosion tore through the gathering of Dalish clans, killed the hahren, the Keepers, everyone. If I as the Keeper’s First somehow survived but everyone I knew and believed in had died.

We’re almost to the gate at the end of town. Soldiers open it when they see us coming, and Cassandra goes on.

“We lash out, like the sky. But we must think beyond ourselves, as she did. Until the Breach is sealed.”

When we reach the gate, she pulls out a dagger. At first, I fight the urge to take a step back, but she gestures with it.

“There will be a trial. I can promise no more.” She cuts the ropes binding my hands. “Come. It is not far.”

“Where are you taking me?” My wrists, free after some unknown amount of time of binding in irons and ropes, hurt with the release. The air is cold, biting, but it feels healing too.

“Your mark must be tested on something smaller than the Breach.” Cassandra motions at the path ahead, up the hill. Toward the Breach.

What choice do I have, but to follow?


	2. The First Rift I Remember

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lavellan meets the team, is very freaked out, and finds perhaps a kindred or two.

“We’re getting close to the rift. You can hear the fighting.” Cassandra’s footsteps increase in pace behind me as I climb the stairs, but the sounds ahead and her words make me slow.

“ _Who’s_ fighting?”

“You will see soon. We must help them.”

My heart turns over, and my hands suddenly feel clammier on my unfamiliar staff. It is awkward in my hands, like it is as unsure of me as I am of it.

Whatever I’m expecting, it’s not what I get when we crest the rise at the top of the snow-covered stairs. A virulent green ball of fractured light hangs in the air, and below it…

A trio of shades circle the people I assume Cassandra intends us to help.

I’m moving before I can think, before I can get hung up on the newness of the weapon in my hands. I fling chain lightning at the shades. As the demons convulse with the crack of energy from my staff, I catch glimpses of the people I’m helping. A beardless dwarf with a crossbow that fires as fast as any of my clan’s hunters with a short bow. A bald mage flinging ice at one of the temporarily paralysed shades—an _elf_ mage with a wolf jawbone hanging at his chest.

It’s a bizarre detail to notice, and my mana recovers enough for me to throw a fireball at the shade who is close enough to the elf to land a hit. The shade panics, the elven mage recovers his distance, and I turn my attention to the other demons.

Before I can fire off another bolt of lightning, though, the dwarf’s crossbow bolt impales a shade through the face, and the battle is over.

“Quickly! Before more come through!” Someone seizes my wrist, a strong hand holding my left hand high.

Not just in the air. Toward the green ball of crystalline energy, the rift that spawned the demons.

Something rushes through me, through my hand, tightening every muscle and tendon in my arm on the way. I can’t help the small gasp of surprise that escapes me. Green light jumps from my hand to the rift, chaining me, pulling at edges of me I didn’t know I had. There is something—I’ve never felt this before, but there, a frayed end I can—

With a crack of sound and light like a massive stone breaking, the rift explodes. I leap back, and the pressure at my wrist vanishes immediately.

The rift is gone, leaving only the Seeker, the dwarf, and the elven mage. It was his hand on my wrist, and he’s watching me now, some mixture of relief and triumph on his face, curiosity in his grey-blue eyes.

“What did you do?” I blurt out, flexing my hand. The cramp releases, agonisingly slow.

“ _I_ did nothing,” he says. “The credit is yours.”

“At least this is good for something.”

“Whatever magic opened the Breach in the sky also placed that mark upon your hand. I theorised that the mark would also be able to close the rifts that have opened in the Breach’s wake, and it seems I was correct.” He says it without pride, only simple satisfaction and the hint of a smile.

“Meaning it could also close the Breach itself,” Cassandra breaks in.

“Possibly,” the elf acknowledges. Then he turns back to me, that small smile again on his face. “It seems you hold the key to our salvation.”

There is something about him that I can sense. I have always been sensitive to the Beyond—the Keeper worried over me for years of my training with my clan—but this is beyond my ken. Yet there is something—

“Good to know!” says the dwarf, shouldering his crossbow. “Here I thought we’d be ass deep in demons forever.”

Whatever my thought was about the mage, it escapes with the sudden choking laugh from my throat. It sounds half-panicked to my own ears, and I swallow it as fast as I can.

“Varric Tethras. Rogue, storyteller, and occasionally unwelcome tagalong.” The dwarf gives me a sly grin, putting me—if not fully—at ease for the first time since I woke up in this nightmare.

Cassandra makes a rude noise to my left. I cough and say the first stupid thing that comes to mind.

“Are you erm…with the Chantry, or…?” I didn’t think the Chantry let non-humans in, but—

The mage chuckles, and I turn to look at him. He’s shaking his head, an amused smile curling his lips as he says, “Was that a serious question?”

I want to say no, it’s an honest reaction to awkward confusion, but Varric pipes up again before I have the chance.

“Technically I’m a prisoner, just like you.”

“I _brought_ you here to tell your story to the Divine. Clearly that is no longer necessary,” says Cassandra.

“Yet here I am,” Varric says to her with the kind of smile you give someone when you know they find you obnoxious. “Lucky for you, considering current events.”

That leads to another awkward pause.

“That’s a—nice crossbow you have there,” I say, more for Varric’s benefit than Cassandra’s. Knowing I’m not the only person here who’s her prisoner is a relief.

Never thought I’d say that.

Besides, it seems to be the right thing to say this time.

“Ah, isn’t she?” Varric says, and for a split second I wonder if I missed something. “Bianca and I have been through a lot together.”

“You named your crossbow Bianca?” I like this dwarf already.

“Of course. And she’ll be great company in the valley.”

“Absolutely not!” Cassandra breaks in. She huffs. “Your help is appreciated, Varric, but—”

“Have you been in the valley lately, Seeker? Your soldiers aren’t in control anymore.” Varric gives her a winsome grin. “You need me.”

“Ugh!” The Seeker throws up her hands—actually throws up her hands—and walks away.

“My name is Solas,” says the elven mage. “If there are to be introductions. I am pleased to see you still live.”

I give a small start at his name, thinking of my first impression of him, since it was one of humility, and the man’s name is literally Pride.

“He means, ‘I kept that mark from killing you while you slept,’” Varric says helpfully.

He did?

“You seem to know a great deal about it all,” I say to Solas. I am completely overwhelmed. Before this…excursion I hadn’t met a new person in half a year, and now—

“Like you, Solas is an apostate, well-versed in such matters,” Cassandra says, circling back to us.

—Every time I try to think, someone new is talking. I’m not used to so many people talking.

“Technically all mages are now apostates, Cassandra,” Solas replies, and I can’t help but listen. “My travels have allowed me to learn much of the Fade, far beyond the experience of any Circle mage.”

My heart gives a surge of pride myself, since he looks right at me when he says it. He’s an elf. He knows I am Dalish, even if he is not, and he will know from my vallaslin that I am no Circle mage either. It is a kinship, a small one, and one I am grateful for. Another prisoner in Varric and another elven mage in Solas—my breath calms marginally. I am not so alone as I thought, perhaps. Perhaps.

Solas is going on. “I came to offer whatever help I can give with the breach. If it is not closed, we are all doomed, regardless of origin.”

He punctuates _doomed_ with a lift of his arms and shoulders that somehow epitomises his entire situation as an elven apostate turning up to offer his services to the Chantry—the _Chantry_ —while the sanctioned circles are at literal war with their templar jailers under a massive hole in the sky. It’s unthinkable. It’s absurd. And it is apparently reality.

Especially because he’s right on that count. I fumble for words again. “And what will you do after this is all over?”

That hint of a smile again, just before he angles his gaze in Cassandra’s direction.

“One hopes those in power will remember who helped, and who did not. Cassandra, you should know. The magic involved here is unlike any I’ve seen. Your prisoner is a mage, but I find it difficult to imagine any mage having such power.”

“Understood. We must get to the forward camp quickly.” Cassandra moves down the hill, where Solas quickly follows.

“Well, Bianca’s excited,” says Varric. I look at him. He winks and follows the others.

I pause before moving after him.

Once again, my life has changed, so long as I might still have it at all.

How much has it changed?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This first meeting always gets me for a bunch of reasons. Lavellan is so awkward, but there is someone like her finally. She's not alone with all the humans after all, and I am always also struck by Solas's apparent curiosity, even though he clearly isn't keen on the Dalish as we shortly find out.
> 
> Anyway. First meetings!


	3. You Are Dalish

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Finding her feet on the way to the hole in the sky, Ilaana is at odds with herself--and the new mage in her party.

The way down the path is quiet. I catch each of my new acquaintances glancing periodically up at the sky, and I know they see me do the same. There’s a hole in the sky. A hole. In the sky.

Not just the sky, either. In the veil. A hole to the Beyond, the Fade. I do not fear the Beyond, but I do fear it flinging demons into Thedas. The spirits in the Beyond are not all demons, but they reflect what they see. When what they see is humanity in all its flaws and power struggles, well. Disaster is putting it lightly, and that’s one at a time.

The Breach draws my eye yet again, and I force myself to continue on. Any demons we kill now means fewer to harm someone else later. Because of this, we move cautiously, trying to truly clear our path so at least there is one demon-free route for people to move on.

We are finishing up battling another trio of shades at an abandoned campsite at the side of a hill when Solas speaks up again.

“You are Dalish, but clearly away from the rest of your clan. Did they send you here?”

“What do you know of the Dalish?” His question catches me off guard. They did, in fact, send me here. I was meant to observe—spy on, I suppose—the Conclave. I remember getting here, picking my way to the temple, but then nothing. I brush up against the hole in my memory again. Solas is going on.

“I have wandered many roads in my time. Crossed paths with your people on more than one occassion.”

His voice is unmistakably cool, and even if it weren’t, the measured cadence of his words tells me enough—whatever experience Solas has had with the Dalish, it has not been good. My heart and breath quicken.

“What do you mean by ‘crossed paths’?” I ask, trying to keep my tone gentle.

“I mean that I offered to share knowledge, only to be attacked for no greater reason than their superstition.”

My heart does a small jump as if being pulled in two different directions at once. I feel it first as an instinct to defend my people, but just as strong is my own experience, my own life of asking earnest questions and getting scolded for them. The superstition that has brought me too many suspicious looks for things I merely happened into. There is too much nuance necessary to this conversation, far more than will be found on the side of a hill surrounded by remnants of demons.

Before I can answer, Varric sighs loudly. “Can’t you elves just play nice for once?”

After that I cannot bring myself to continue the subject. I just met this man. The last thing I want to do is reinforce his bias with my own. I know nothing about him, nothing except his name, his status as an elven apostate, and now this point of apparent hurt.

I trot back down the hill, back to the frozen river.

My hand seizes up just as I am about to set foot back on the path, and I gasp as sudden pain takes hold of my arm. It’s like my own lightning but stronger, pulling every vein and nerve in my hand and wrist and filling it with veilfire.

“Quickly,” says Solas. “We must get her to the Breach before the mark consumes her.”

I can’t help the wild-eyed look I give him. I don’t want to be consumed by anything. I just want to get out of this alive.

Perhaps it shows on my face. He blinks at me as if somehow surprised, then has the decency to look abashed.

Since my magic manifested, I’ve been seen only as a title, the First to the Keeper, set apart. Now it seems this new manifestation of magic has only made me into a different kind of tool.

“I know it’s difficult, but we must keep moving,” Cassandra says.

The compassion in her voice surprises me. I nod, looking away from Solas. She gives me a tight smile.

At the next corner, Varric asks me another question, breaking the electricity that has amplified the tension in the air. “So, _are_ you innocent?”

“I don’t remember what happened,” I say, because it’s the truth.

“That’ll get you every time. Should’ve spun a story.”

“That is what _you_ would have done,” says Cassandra.

“It’s more believable,” Varric insists. “And less likely to result in premature execution.”

My nervous laugh is cut off as another gaggle of demons appears ahead of us, two shades and a pair of wraiths.

We cut them down, and I stifle another laugh when Cassandra yells out, “Dead!” in her Nevarran accent.

Solas sees me, those grey-blue eyes crinkling at the edges with just a hint of the smile he does not let show anywhere else.

I’ve never heard anyone yell out “Dead!” in battle before when killing a foe. It’s so ridiculous as to be…strangely endearing. Maybe it would be less so if we were facing human beings, but with demons—does she always do this?

Cassandra herself doesn’t seem to notice my reaction, because as we continue up the hill, the Seeker is clearly fretting.

“I hope Leliana made it through okay.”

“She’s resourceful, Seeker,” Varric reassures her.

“We will see for ourseles at the forward camp,” says Solas. “We are almost there.”

Just as we reach the top of the stairs again, I feel a…wrenching in my hand, a twitch, almost a painful itch.

“Another rift!” Cassandra yells an instant before I see it myself, that green faceted light in the air.

“We must seal it, quickly!” Solas bellows. A shade comes toward me, and I feel a barrier fly up around me. Solas nods once to acknowledge what he did for me and throws ice at a demon.

“They keep coming! Help us!” This voice is unfamiliar, one of Cassandra’s soldiers, soon to be overwhelmed.

I fling a fireball at the nearest demon.

With the four of us, we are able to quickly put them on the defensive. On impulse I reach for the rift. The demons are still alive, but as I pull on the magics emanating from the tear in the veil, a burst of energy goes through me, and the demons still alive convulse, suddenly staggered. A flash of triumph warms me, and my chain lightning soars toward the remaining demons, crackling between them and finishing them off.

The moment they are dead, I feel the rift respond to me. I throw up my hand just as I hear Solas yell, “Hurry! Use the mark!”

His voice drops off quickly when he realises I am already doing it.

My triumph is short lived.

The moment we reach the forward camp, the first thing I hear is a Chantry cleric calling for my immediate extradition.

He stands in the middle of a bridge buzzing with people. Varric replenishes our potions, prudently staying out of the cleric's sights. I have no such luxury.

“Justinia is dead! We must elect a replacement and obey her orders on the matter!” The cleric looks at me with the kind of hatred I expect to see from humans.

He sounds like every self-righteous ass I’ve ever met, but I am at their mercy. I am suddenly all too conscious that I am an apostate to them, and that I am in the heart of the Chantry’s power. Solas _volunteered_ for this?

I glance up at the sky. This little man from the Chantry is bawling about executing me when that hole is swirling in the crowds, spitting demons down on his head?

“Isn’t closing the breach the more pressing issue?” I say incredulously before I can stop myself.

I think I see a faint quirk of Solas’s lips.

“You’re the reason it exists in the first place!” The chancellor looks ready to run me through with the nearest sword without waiting for any Divine, dead or newly elected.

As if on cue, while the chancellor and Cassandra argue, the Breach expands, and my mark glows bright. It stops them mid-spat with Leliana about whether to rush the Breach or sneak through the mountains, and Cassandra takes that opportunity to turn to me.

“How do you think we should proceed?”

“Now you’re asking me what I think?” I can’t keep the amazement out of my voice.

“You have the mark,” Solas says. He’s looking not at me, but at the chancellor when he says it.

“And you are the one we must keep alive,” Cassandra finishes. “Since we cannot agree on our own…”

She really means it. Within three feet of me there’s a man arguing I should be killed immediately and a woman telling me to direct _her_ army. And a hole in the sky spitting demons, though that’s thankfully a bit farther away than three feet.

“Use the mountain path,” I hear myself say. “Work together. You all know what’s at stake.”

As we walk away, the chancellor says to Cassandra, “On your head be the consequences, Seeker.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I stumbled across this exchange in my second or third playthrough, and it's stuck with me. Between Solas's remarks about the way the Dalish treated him and Minaeve's story, I couldn't stop thinking about how that would feel to hear to someone already struggling with where they fit in their own world, let alone when they get violently thrust into a new one.


	4. The Hole in the Sky

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lavellan contends with the hole in the sky and the fact that she was at the centre of the most pivotal moment in recent history--but the hole in her memory is every bit a vast.

The path through the mountains is quiet, almost eerily so after the noise and chaos at the forward camp. By the time I’ve climbed three enormous ladders with Solas and Cassandra discussing the nature of the mining tunnels ahead of us, my arms and legs are burning, my back a mass of knots even before we get into the tunnels, and the moment we reach the entrance, we’re greeted with more demons.

We fight through, falling into a rhythm I didn’t expect. Solas is diligent with his barriers, and I can’t help but notice they spring up around me first. It’s probably the mark—as Cassandra and Solas so recently pointed out, I am unexpendable only because of the thing itself. It makes me feel like I’m swimming in my own skin.

Fighting the demons is a good distration from the uncertainty that my new companions even see me as a person.

When we emerge on the other side of the tunnels, we are greeted by the bodies of Cassandra’s soldiers and the itch in my hand that I’m learning means a rift is nearby.

“Here’s your missing soldiers,” Varric says, sighing and nudging one of them with the toe of his boot.

Not long dead, but not that recent, either.

“That cannot be all of them.” Cassandra sounds more like she wants to hope than as if she actually does.

I miss what is said next, because I’m not wrong about the itch in my hand. Just ahead of us on a stone outcropping with Chantry statues at its corners and another rift at its centre. Four scouts are fighting its demons...and they are not winning. A surge of cool energy enfolds me in a barrier again. It manages to catch me by surprise. Startled, I glance behind me to see Solas already focused on a shade, flinging ice at it with deft hands on his spinning staff.

“Lady Cassandra!” One of the soldiers calls out with heavy relief in their voice.

“You’re alive!” Cassandra is already hurrying toward the demons as the soldier replies.

“Just barely!”

Without another thought, I throw lightning at the shades, paralyzing them even as Cassandra shouts her taunt in their direction.

They’re dead soon enough, and this time the rift swirls into ripples of pale green that draw on something within the earth, or seem to. Before I can react, two terrors erupt from the crackling energy in the ground.

They come by their name honestly. Like enormous stick insects, they are vaguely humanoid, their mouths perpetually open in a twisted scream.

I’ve never seen one this close before. I don’t want to see them any closer. I seize the moment Cassandra gets their attention, grabbing hold of the rift and weaving my mark with its magic. It surges through me, exploding outward and stunning the terrors. Varric lands an arrow smack in the center of one’s chest, and Solas freezes the other as if on cue.

I aim a fireball at the pincushion, and the moment I feel their life force vanish, I pull on the rift once more. When it explodes in a shower of disintegrating green light, my hand gives a twitch. It’s getting easier.

Solas comes to my side, peering at the patch of air where the rift hung only moments before.

“Sealed, as before. You are becoming quite proficient at this.” Solas gives me a sideways, satisfied smile.

His words kindle a glow of…something. Pride, perhaps, or relief. Perhaps something else.

“Let’s hope it works on the big one,” mutters Varric.

I return Solas’s smile almost shyly. My hand cramps, but it is nothing like the way it feels when the Breach expands.

One of the scouts is on the ground, and Cassandra helps her to her feet.

“Thank the Maker you finally arrived, Lady Cassandra. I don’t think we could have held out much longer,” she says.

“Thank our prisoner, Lieutenant,” says Cassandra. “She insisted we come this way.”

I jump at the word _prisoner_. I keep forgetting. I shouldn't forget. Not that.

“The prisoner? Then you—” The soldier turns to you with gratitude and alarm fighting for dominance on her face.

“It was worth saving you, if we could,” I say, feeling awkward to be described as a prisoner and a hero in one breath.

“Then you have my sincere gratitude,” says the scout, and indeed it has won on her face. She looks at me with scarcely concealed awe.

“The way into the valley behind us is clear for the moment. Go, while you still can.” Cassandra points back behind us, where we came.

“At once,” the scout says to Cassandra, then to her fellows, “Quickly, let’s move!”

Solas peers ahead of us as the sound of their footsteps fade. “The path ahead appears to be clear of demons as well.”

“Let’s hurry, before that changes,” Cassandra says. “Down the ladder. That’s the way to the temple.”

Again she allows me to lead them west down the hill. Going down the ladders is easier than going up them, but my muscles feel as though they will turn to mush any minute. We veer north after the ladders, continuing down a pathway covered with boards. Our feet are too loud against the wood, and I don’t trust my fatigued muscles to keep me from slipping.

“So,” Varric says from behind me. “Holes in the Fade don’t just _accidentally_ happen, right?”

“If enough magic is brought to bear, it is possible,” Solas answers before I can say anything myself.

“But there are easier ways to make things explode.” Varric snorts, kicking at something on the path.

“That is true,” says Solas with a chuckle.

“We will consider _how_ this happened once the immediate danger is past.” Cassandra’s sharp words cut off the rest of that conversation.

We continue down the path as it meanders into an enormous crater. The ground is scorched black—or perhaps that is just the colour of the stone itself. Either way, gargantuan spikes of stone protrude from the ground, leaning away from what must be the centre of the blast. Twined in the black are veins of green, glowing like the Fade, and scattered among the rubble of the temple and the boulders and spikes are—

The gasp that escapes me is a pitiful thing. There are bodies, frozen in grotesque postures, kneeling or clawing or reaching helplessly into the sky. Some of them still burn, the fire feeding on the fat still clinging to their skeletal remains. We pass one kneeling figure with flames in its mouth. The smell…

My breath comes shallow and raw. Above us, the Breach itself roils in spinning cycles through the clouds.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see Solas looking at me. Watching my reaction or something else? I don’t meet his eyes.

“The Temple of Sacred Ashes,” he says suddenly.

“What’s left of it.” Varric scuffs his foot on a pile of black gravel again.

Cassandra points. “That is where you walked out of the Fade and our soldiers found you. They said a woman was in the rift behind you. No one knows who she was.”

The woman I remember. No wonder she has started to trust my story enough to let me help freely; my story matches that of her people, at least what I’ve managed to recall.

There are bodies—everywhere. I remember there were meant to be hundreds—maybe more—people at the Conclave. I want to throw up, but I make myself see, make myself look at the horrors around me. I can’t _remember_.

But something in me feels this, something in me feels—

Eyes in the darkness, legs and chittering scraping clawing chasing coming after me and—

“The Breach is a long way up,” says Varric.

He snaps me out of that nightmare, the fragment of memory I do have. Footsteps sound behind us, and I turn to see Leliana approaching at a trot with soldiers at her back.

“You’re here! Thank the Maker,” she says.

“Leliana, have your men take up positions around the temple,” Cassandra tells her.

Leliana gives me a tight smile before obeying.

Cassandra turns to me. “This is your chance to end this. Are you ready?”

Ready? Is it possible to be ready for something like this?

“I’ll try, but I don’t know if I can reach that, much less close it.” I crane my neck upward, trying to ignore the insistent pull in my left hand.

“No. This rift was the first and is the key. Seal it, and perhaps we seal the Breach,” says Solas.

“Then let’s find a way down. And be careful.” Cassandra motions to the way forward.

Leliana follows as we move up a short flight of stairs and pick out a path that circles the temple ruins.

When we turn a corner, though, a booming, sonorous voice stops me in my tracks.

“Now is the hour of our victory. Bring forth the sacrifice.”

That voice. I can’t remember hearing it before, not consciously, but it takes hold of something primal and terrified inside of me and twists. Something in me knows that voice. My tongue is stuck to the roof of my mouth. I  _feel_ the voice all around me, inside me. It pulls at my skin.

“What are we hearing?” Cassandra asks, sounding alarmed.

“At a guess: the person who created the Breach,” says Solas.

I’ve heard of this before. I’ve _seen_ this before, where the Veil is thin; echoes of things that have happened in such places sometimes bleed through.

Around the next corner is something glowing and red, spikes of it and fragments and chips of it littering the ground among the black basalt and its green veins. It’s garish. Powerful. It hums like lyrium, but it can’t be. It can't be lyrium, can it? The way it feels is...wrong.

There’s something panic-adjacent in Varric’s voice. “You know this stuff is red lyrium, Seeker.”

“I see it, Varric.”

“But what’s it _doing_ here?”

I’ve not known Varric Tethras for long, but he doesn’t seem the type to be easily ruffled. And it _is_ lyrium. It fills me with revulsion. What happened to it?

“Magic could have drawn on lyrium beneath the temple, corrupted it—” Solas offers.

“It’s evil,” says Varric sharply. “Whatever you do, don’t touch it.”

The voice from above returns, running fingers of fear through my insides like sand.

“Keep the sacrifice still.”

Then a woman’s voice: “Someone help me!”

“That is Divine Justinia’s voice!” Cassandra gasps.

Ahead is a drop off. I jump down, anxiety churning in my stomach. There are more bones here, scattered as if whoever they belonged to was too close to the explosion itself to leave a cohesive corpse. Skulls and fragments of ribs lay all around me.

The mark on my hand flares.

“Someone help me!” The woman’s voice repeats.

“What’s going on here?”

The second voice is my voice. That’s me. That’s my voice, but I don’t _remember_. How does my disembodied voice sound so calm?

“That was your voice,” Cassandra says, turning to stare at me. “Most Holy called out to you. But…”

White light flashes through the air, and as it fades, I see them. A shape with glowing red eyes—an enormous shape towering over Divine Justinia, who floats, restrained by tendrils of ropey red energy that hold her arms outstretched. I want to run, run away, like some instinct within me has sensed a dangerous predator and if I don’t flee, it will get me—but it already has.

And then there’s _me_. I’ve never seen myself before, outside of a mirror, and even then only rarely. I—a figure of me—I run into the room.

“What’s going on here?” My voice is too composed. I want to scream at myself to get away.

“Run while you can! Warn them!” The desperation in the Divine’s voice wrenches at me. I’ve heard this before. I feel it. _Why can’t I remember?_

“We have an intruder,” says the looming figure. “Slay the elf.”

White light flashes again, and the images are gone.

“You _were_ there! Who attacked? And the Divine, is she…Was this vision true? What are we seeing?” Cassandra rounds on me, eyes frantic.

“I don’t remember!” I back away instinctively, hearing the word _prisoner_ over and over in my mind. My heart is in my throat, choking me. My eyes prickle with tears, and it's not about being a prisoner. It's not about Cassandra or anything she has said. This place, this place.

“Echoes of what happened here,” Solas says, distracting the Seeker. “The Fade bleeds into this place.”

He says what I thought only moments before. It brings back that thread of kinship, tethers me. I plant my feet. I have to pull myself together for...whatever comes next.

Solas glances at me, and I swallow, grateful that he took her attention off me. Grateful for that tiny thread. He gives an almost imperceptible nod in my direction.

Without another look, the mage motions up at the rift with his staff. This rift is enormous, high up in the air, between us and the Breach itself.

“This rift is not sealed, but it is closed, albeit temporarily. I believe with the mark, the rift can be opened and then sealed properly and safely. However, opening the rift will likely attract attention from the other side.”

“That means demons,” Cassandra bellows. “Stand ready!”

Dimly, I am aware of archers and other soldiers preparing to move. Leliana’s people, I think.

This is my cue. If I don’t do this, if I _can’t_ do this, nothing else matters.

I throw my left arm toward the rift. I don’t know what in Mythal’s name I’m even doing—I’ve not tried to _open_ a rift before. But something in me knows, and it finds the seams of this one, picking them apart with threads of magic, nudging them aside, and the mark flares brightly.

Something huge soars out of the rift, landing with a thud that shakes the ground under our feet. I see first its hulking shape, feel its presence like that pompous little man at the forward camp but magnified a hundred times. A thousand times.

A pride demon, and a big one. It towers over us, covered in dark grey spikes and crackling with purple lightning. Its beady eyes are like a spider’s, a cluster of them in the middle of its face that glint when it sees us and laughs.

Archers’ arrows glance off its hide.

“Now!” Cassandra yells. “We must strip its defenses! Wear it down! Disrupt the rift!”

Disrupt the rift. That’s what I’ve been doing with the others.

Cassandra hollers her war cry and engages the demon, keeping its focus away from me. I’m aware of Varric and Solas attacking from my flanks, but my attention is only for the rift.

When I reach up, it takes hold.

If the other rifts felt like they reached into my hand, this one seems to catch me by the shoulder, sparks of painful energy crackling and fizzing into my chest, my armpit, the edge of my breast.

I hold on, gritting my teeth and trying to breathe through the growing agony. I cry out when the energy of the rift bursts outward, and I only barely hear Cassandra’s voice.

“The demon is vulnerable! Now!”

I spin and hit it with chain lightning, but that seems to have no effect on it. My fireball sets it burning, even as Solas hits it with ice, nearly freezing it through. Varric’s crossbow is amazing to behold, firing bolts at the demon faster than most archers can use a short bow.

There’s little time to marvel.

“More coming through the rift!” Cassandra’s words reach me only moments before a shade’s claws catch me across the back.

I scream.

Again, cool energy enfolds me. Solas has given me a barrier again.

My chain lightning might do nothing to the pride demon, but it will fry these shades. I turn it on them without mercy. My left shoulder blade throbs, sticky under my armour.

The moment the shades are dead, I aim my hand at the rift again. Cassandra’s nose is spurting blood, and Varric only just misses the pride demon’s lightning whip as the rift brings the demon to its knees once more.

Again and again it seems, we wear down the pride demon’s armour. I lose track of how many shades taste my lightning. I can taste it myself, humming through the air like I'm at the eye of a storm. And then the pride demon falls to its knees once more, finally, before collapsing dead on the ground.

“Now! Seal the rift!” Cassandra looks to me with wild hope written across her face.

This is it. I cannot help but feel her hope, Solas’s hope, Varric’s hope, the hope of everyone watching around us and nearly shaking from the battle we only barely won. I thrust my mark at the rift.

“Do it!” yells Cassandra.

The rift dives through my arm and me through it. Energy courses through my veins, freezing me to the spot. It’s everywhere. It’s in all of me. I can’t breathe. I can’t move. I can’t feel anything but this burning raging green fire—

Nothing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When Ilaana's missing memories are explained, I always think about how the memories in our head and the memories of our body are not the same. We might forget something in our heads, but our bodies remember, and hers remembers who opened the Breach and the terror she felt.


	5. Not Dreaming

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ilaana wakes up in a world very different from the one she fell asleep in.

When I awake, it’s to a scuffling sound. I open my eyes, which feels like something I ought to be grateful for.

A young elf woman is carrying a box of supplies toward me. I have no idea where I am, but the room is warm, and I am…alive.

The young woman drops the box with a clatter.

“Oh!” she gasps. “I didn’t know you were awake, I swear.”

“Why are you frightened? What happened?” Immediately alarmed, I scramble backward on the bed.

“That’s wrong, isn’t it? I said the wrong thing.” Her fingers pluck at each other, frantic, nervous, afraid.

“I don’t…think so?” What is happening? Why is she afraid of me?

“I beg your forgiveness, and your blessing. I am but a humble servant. You are back in Haven, my lady. They say you saved us. The Breach stopped growing, just like the mark on your hand.”

My mark flares as she says it, and I stare down at it. It’s still there.

“It’s all anyone has talked about for the last three days,” she says in a strangled voice.

Three days. I close my eyes. My body remembers the rift, the enormous rift, the light, the hope…and then nothing.

Then now.

“Then the danger is over,” I say faintly. I think I hope it to be true more than believe.

“The Breach is still in the sky, but that’s what they say. I’m sure Lady Cassandra would want to know you’ve awakened. She said at once.”

The young elf scurries toward the door.

“And where is she?” I ask before she can flee.

“In the Chantry. With the lord chancellor. At once, she said.” Then she’s gone, leaving me alone.

I take a moment, sitting on the edge of the bed. I feel…okay.

This is what I wanted, isn’t it? A chance to be my own person without the expectations of being my clan’s First, without the expectation of someday being Keeper. There is freedom in this moment. The Breach has stopped growing. The mark may not kill me after all. I am still alive.

I inhale, smelling the strangeness of this small house, the fire burning on a hearth and not outside in a pit. Everything is wood, but so far removed from the trees that made it. It’s nothing like the ironbark my clan’s crafter Adahleni bends so carefully to her will, coaxing and never forcing, bringing out the spirit that already exists within it. The house is nothing like an aravel. I wander around in a circle from the bed, rifling through the box the woman dropped (it contains only a few healing herbs, probably meant for me) and peering at the desk, where there’s a frustrated-sounding note about my condition including a desire for a templar to oversee me—that makes me shiver.

I should go see what—what Cassandra wants of me now. This cannot be the end of it. I will have to write to my clan, tell them…something.

My sense of freedom wavers. If this _is_ the end of it, then I will have to go back.

I pause, my fingers touching the edge of the note.

Not yet. I don’t know yet what is happening. I will hear what Cassandra wants first.

There is armour there for me, my armour. I dress quickly, pulling on the green mercenary coat and fastening buckles and stuffing my heels into boots that still feel foreign on my feet. One thing, then another. First, Cassandra. Then whatever comes next.

All thoughts of what comes next vanish from my head the moment I open the door. _Next_ meets me right on the other side of it, waiting for me. My hand freezes on the doorknob as if I’ve unknowingly stepped on an ice glyph. There are people—humans and elves alike, but mostly humans—lined up on either side of the path. At the forefront are two armed soldiers, and the moment they see me, they salute, hands to their chests with a unison clatter. What.

“That’s her,” someone gasps, and it sounds like awe in their voice. “That’s the Herald of Andraste. They said when she came out of the Fade, Andraste herself was watching over her.”

“The Herald of Andraste.” This voice is hushed reverence, and it almost sends me staggering almost to the side of the path. No, no, no, no no no no no no.

They _cannot_ be talking about me. They cannot be serious. I take one step, then another. If I want to get to the Chantry, I have to…walk through them. Between the lines of them. They are all staring at me.

“Why did Lady Cassandra have her in chains? I thought Seekers knew everything.”

I take one step, then another. Then another. I descend the few stairs to the beaten path, and I hear another hushed whisper.

“It isn’t complicated. Andraste herself blessed her.”

One step, then another.

The whispers follow me as I walk in a jolting pattern, trying to keep my gait smooth and failing. Sweet Sylaise, I thought I was simply walking to the Chantry. I didn’t expect—

“Hush, we shouldn’t disturb her.” Someone must see the panic on my face.

A tentative voice calls out, “Blessings upon you, Herald of Andraste.”

—I didn’t expect humans to treat me like I’d been kissed by one of their gods.

Oh, Creators, what is happening?

Up the next set of stairs is more whispers, more murmurs of awe.

“That’s her. She stopped the Breach from getting any bigger.”

“Good luck sealing those rifts!”

“Walk safely, Herald of Andraste.”

I make it to the Chantry in a near-panic. I can feel the frigid wind on the whites of my eyeballs. The skin on my forehead where Mythal’s vallaslin twists in verdant green lines is tense and aching from the rigidity in my body.

As touch the door, I hear one of the clerics say too loudly, “Chancellor Roderick says that the Chantry wants nothing to do with us.”

“That’s not Chancellor Roderick’s decision, Sister,” comes the hurried response, and someone else adds, “Go in peace, Herald of Andraste.”

I shove the door the rest of the way open, and when I pass the threshold, I close the door behind me and fall against it, my heart pounding so hard I’m sure the gathered priests outside can hear it as loud as if were hitting the door with my fists.

There is no one here but me.

There is no one here but me.

A shaky breath gulps into my lungs.

There is no one here but me.

I’m the one they were speaking of, the ones their words reached out to touch. Me. Dalish, elven, mage,  _me_. How am I the one their words were meant for?

I remember again Cassandra’s words as she described their hateful stares what feels to me like only moments ago. _They have decided your guilt. They need it. You will have a trial. I can promise no more._

Their words should have reached to touch someone else. Someone who worships their Maker, their Andraste. Someone who believes what they do, and not me, not a Dalish elf who believes—

What do I even believe? Mythal’s vallaslin swirls and dips across my forehead and over my cheekbones in fresh green like new growth, but I’ve never been sure, never had the conviction of my clan or even these shemlen outside.

Once, I crossed a river with my clan, the water rushing along slippery stones the hunters and I used as a path. I followed Merin, her easy footsteps finding balance on the rocks, her easy voice joking with Astariel ahead of her as the river drowned out the birdsong.

One of my feet found the wrong place on a low stone, and it moved beneath me where it had stayed still for Merin. I teetered on that rock, trying to keep my balance.

I feel like that now, the flagstones of the Chantry floor tipping unexpectedly under my feet, my weight threatening to pull me off balance. Their words want to remake me into someone else, someone I don’t know.

But there is no one here but me.

For the moment, I am alone, and the sudden silence and solitude rushes over me like a cool rain in the height of summer.

After a few breaths, I hear raised voices at the opposite end of the building. It’s obviously Cassandra and the chancellor, but I cannot face them yet.

Instead, I open the first door I come to, and I recognise it. After a small anteroom full of dusty books and half-empty wooden crates, stairs lead downward. The dungeon.

Where I first woke, chained and bound.

I stumble down the stairs, needing to see, needing to _see_ if it is real, if this is real, if any of it can possibly be real.

I’m paying so little attention that I bang my head on a brazier hanging from the ceiling in the long corridor that stretches to the cells. The jolt of pain with the heat of it against my head startles me. I almost laugh. Here I am while they whisper words like _Herald of Andraste_ , banging my head on an iron brazier in a dungeon. What would they think if I accidentally set my own hair on fire in a moment of thoughtless clumsiness? In the dungeon they put me in, no less, where they were ready to queue up to cut my throat just a few days ago.

This time the laugh does escape me, wild and confused.

At the end of the corridor is the cell I was in, where I…slept after they say I fell out of a rift, out of the Beyond.

I remember a woman. I remember the spiders chasing me. Could that woman have been their Andraste? I wouldn’t even know her if she were.

I touch the bars on the cell where I was kept. As if the motion spurs it, I hear Varric’s voice in my head.

_He means “I kept that mark from killing you while you slept.”_

Solas. He sat with me here.

_I am pleased to see you still live._

I wonder if he would have told me if Varric hadn’t. The image of me asleep in chains with a strange man beside me fills me with fear. But that it was Solas—somehow that is better. Another mage, another elf. Someone who clearly knows something of the magic that marked me this way.

I have always felt like I was too many things at once to just be my clan’s Keeper, and that feeling is still with me now, a paradox of being at once far too alone and not alone enough.

In that cell as I slept, I would have been in complete isolation. I wasn’t aware of my surroundings then, but the thought of it strikes me with a chill so sudden it freezes my lungs. Perhaps it was just the curiosity of a mage met with something unknown and arcane. Perhaps I was just something to keep alive in a game where the mysterious magic was the adversary and the mage its challenger. Perhaps keeping the mark from killing me was simply a way to win that game and get a tool to use against the Breach as the spoils.

He certainly knew little enough about me for it to have been an act of caring, but even so.

I should thank him. I wish I could talk to him right now, that I could step through the Fade far enough to reach him instead of going upstairs to face whatever it is awaiting me with Cassandra. But that’s ridiculous. He barely knows me. _We must get her to the Breach before the mark consumes her._

Perhaps I am just a tool to be used.

My eyes won’t leave the floor of the cell.

The Seeker is waiting. Something tells me I should go. Now.

I turn away, leaving my prison behind, wondering what new chains await me upstairs.


	6. The Inquisition

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Breach may have quieted, but it is not closed, and Ilaana will have work to do.

When I reach the end of the Chantry hall upstairs, the first thing I hear are voices that make me want to cringe right back downstairs and into a cell.

First is Chancellor Roderick himself. Ugh.

“Have you gone completely mad? She should be taken to Val Royeaux immediately, to be tried by whoever becomes Divine.” He has a thin, obsequious voice, and every word that leaves his mouth is inflated handily with his own self-importance.

Then a surprise from Cassandra: “I do not believe she is guilty.”

“The elf failed, Seeker,” says Roderick with enough venom in his voice to poison an army’s swords. “The Breach is still in the sky. For all you know, she intended it this way.”

“I do not believe that.” Cassandra just sounds tired, as if she wants to sleep for three days like I just did.

“That is not for you to decide. Your duty is to serve the Chantry.”

“My duty is to serve the principles on which the Chantry was founded, Chancellor. As is yours.” Some fire returns to the Seeker’s voice with those words.

Now’s as good a time as any to open the door, I suppose. I push it open. Two soldiers flank it, standing guard. Roderick and Cassandra both look at me from their adversarial position, and Leliana, who has been silent, stands on the other side of the table with a thoughtful expression.

Roderick nearly squawks, his square face immediately red with indignation. “Chain her. I want her prepared for travel to the capital for trial.”

A spike of fear goes through me. The guards are on either side of me. I do not want to fight them.

“Disregard that,” Cassandra says disgustedly. “And leave us.”

The guards, thankfully, salute Cassandra before leaving and closing the door behind them.

I take a breath. I doubt my heart will ever slow enough for me to relax again at this rate.

“You walk a dangerous line, Seeker,” says Roderick, ignoring me for the present.

“The Breach is stable, but it is still a threat. I will not ignore it.” Cassandra looks to me.

My heart is still sputtering from the threat of arrest, but I meet her eyes. “I did everything I could to close the Breach. It almost killed me.”

Clearly thinking as fast as he can to find an opening in my words, Chancellor Roderick trips over his own tongue with triumph. “Yet you live! A convenient result, insofar as you’re concerned.”

“Have a care, Chancellor,” Cassandra says acerbically, resting her hands on the edge of the table. “The Breach is not the only threat we face.”

Leliana chimes in as if we’re at some relaxed gathering instead of discussing the end of the world. “Someone was behind the explosion at the Conclave. Someone Most Holy did not expect. Perhaps they died with the others—or have allies who yet live.”

She looks pointedly at the chancellor with that last, and he almost swallows his tongue.

“ _I_ am a suspect?”

“You. And many others.” I am thankful to not be on the receiving end of Leliana’s sharp-eyed stare.

“But _not_ the prisoner,” Roderick says.

“I heard the voices in the temple. The Divine called to her for help,” says Cassandra. There is still that note of awe in her voice.

Sweet Sylaise, it’s the same awe the others outside had in the village. She sounds like she believes—

“So her survival, that thing on her hand, all a coincidence?” Roderick, on the other hand, clearly does not.

“Providence,” replies Cassandra smugly, confirming one of my own fears. “The Maker sent her to us in our darkest hour.”

Oh, no. No, no, no.

“You realise I’m an elf. A _Dalish_ elf.” The words practically fall out of my mouth.

“The Breach remains, and your mark is our only hope of closing it,” Leliana says smoothly.

I barely know this human woman, but at this moment, I would happily hug her or however humans show gratitude.

“That is not for you to decide,” Roderick says again. He’s veritably vibrating with irritation and (what he probably thinks is) righteous indignation.

Cassandra slams a huge, thick book down on the table, making everyone but Leliana jump.

“You know what this is, Chancellor?” Cassandra pokes the cover with one calloused finger. “A writ from the Divine, granting us authority to act. As of this moment, I declare the Inquisition reborn.”

Before my brain can even process her words, Cassandra’s poking has changed targets from the book to Chancellor Roderick’s chest, backing him up step by step.

“We will close the Breach, we will find those responsible, and we will restore order—with or without your approval.”

The chancellor looks terrified. He must see something in Cassandra’s face that finally breaks his nerve, because he scurries out of the room.

Leliana goes on as if he were never there at all. “This is the Divine’s directive: rebuild the Inquisition of old. Find those who will stand against the chaos.” She looks at me, at Cassandra, at the sprawling table in front of you with its map of Thedas reaching from end to end that you’re just now noticing. “We aren’t ready. We have no leader, no numbers, and now, no Chantry support.”

Cassandra sighs, looking at Leliana. “But we have no choice. We must act now.” Her gaze falls on me. “With you at our side.”

A thousand questions go through my mind. Inquisition of old? Are they trying to start a holy war with a bloody Dalish elf at its helm? Do I even have a choice?

My hand flickers, green light in a slash across my palm.

Time slows when I look at it. Again I feel as if it is the hole in my childish pile of leaves, it with its sensation of _throughness_.

For the first time, a tiny seed of marvel germinates when I look at it amid all my fear.

No, I don’t have a choice, and it’s not their fault. I glance upward, even though I can’t see the Breach through the roof, obviously.

It doesn’t matter what I want right now. I can’t just go home to my clan anyway, not knowing the Breach is there spitting demons out into Thedas and tearing holes in the veil.

“If you’re truly trying to restore order,” I begin.

“That is the plan,” says Leliana.

“Help us fix this before it is too late,” Cassandra adds.

I can do nothing else.

I shake her hand.

An hour later, two ravens wing their way in opposite directions, bringing the news of the Inquisition to Val Royeaux and Denerim, I presume.

I watch them from in front of the Chantry, with Leliana and a blond templar in bizarrely feathered heavy armor. The air is cold, crisp. I can feel the Breach above, hungry and waiting to open its mouth again and swallow us all.

But there is an energy outside, crackling not unlike the rift magic in my palm. I see Cassandra from a distance as she walks toward us, a smile somewhere between relief and hope on her face. Soldiers salute her. Civilians whisper with wide eyes.

They look excited.

She comes our way, joining us.

Again I feel like the stones beneath my feet are tilting under my toes.

The Breach draws my gaze, and in my periphery, I see the others look up as well.

I don’t know these people. I don’t know any of these people. But they are treating me like their equal, trusting me to help close that gaping hole twisting the clouds in the sky.

I do know—with absolute certainty—that this Inquisition will change the world.

It will change me.

It already has.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's so much I want to get to, but so much that it needs to grow, so I hope you're enjoying the opening chapters here! The relationships Lavellan cultivates with the others around her and in Haven are so vital to everything that I feel makes her who she is, and I can't get enough.


	7. A Haven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> At the centre of a radical new organisation, everything seems to swirl around Ilaana like she's the centre the Breach itself. She reaches out to find something to hold onto. Needing a connection--some sort of connection--she finds Solas.

I am free, after a time, to explore Haven while Cassandra and Leliana prepare for a meeting with the advisors. Everyone gives me a wide berth, and while I’m still pretty sure they’re scared of me—well, I’m not actually sure if I prefer awed fear to malicious fear. It’s all unnerving.

Wandering down the western steps and retracing my path back to the house where I woke up, the first person I recognise is Varric. He stands between two tents, warming his hands over a bright and cheerful fire, and the moment he sees me, his face lights up in a grin.

Something in me relaxes again. He’s not an elf—my mind whispers Solas’s name, wanting to speak with him—but he’s also not a human.

“Hi,” I say.

“So,” he says. “Now that Cassandra’s out of earshot—are you holding up all right? I mean, you go from being the most wanted criminal in Thedas to joining the armies of the faithful. Most people would have spread that out over more than one day.”

“I don’t even want to think of how many people died up there on that mountaintop.” I suppress a shudder, remembering all too well the anguished corpses, fire still burning away their bodies.

“A lot of good men and women didn’t make it out of there,” Varric agrees. “For days now we’ve been staring up at the Breach, watching demons and Maker knows what fall out of it. ‘Bad for morale’ would be an understatement. I still can’t believe anyone was in there and lived.”

“It’s pure luck that I escaped,” I say.

“Good luck or bad?” He winces. “You might want to consider running at the first opportunity. I’ve written enough tragedies to recognise where this is going. Heroes are everywhere, but the hole in the sky? That’s beyond heroes. We’re going to need a miracle.”

I have no idea what to say to that. I excuse myself as politely as I can. Instead of being reassuring, that conversation turned into setting my stomach tilting again like an aravel with a broken axel.

The day is bright and cold, and the snow is the type that crunches and squeaks underfoot. It is _really_ cold.

I wander back up the hill and chat with the new quartermaster, Threnn, just enough to realise she’s an absolute Loghain fanatic, at which point I back away and leave. My clan doesn’t involve itself in human politics, but we’ve all heard the stories of the Blight and what Loghain did at Ostagar. The Hero of Ferelden is Dalish. I met her once, long ago, when my vallaslin had hardly even healed and before the Blight took her from her own clan. She’s a legend still living. I’ve always wished I could talk to her. Hear what she thinks of walking the path she is on, one foot in each world. Something in me yearns for that, for someone who might understand what I’m feeling right now.

Someone who understands everyone looking at you like you’re larger than all their lives put together, when you’re just a person.

That trail of thought is not helping.

Farther back down the hill past Varric is Seggrit, who’s selling supplies at prices that can only be called acceptable if you’re the one being very generous. I do manage to sell a few items for some gold, though. Past Seggrit are siege machines. I walk in circles around them at first, both awed and horrified anew at the human ability to make fantastic machines meant only to kill and destroy.

And then I go outside the walls of Haven entirely, where the soldiers skirmish and spar. It’s there I am able to take my first somewhat free-feeling breaths. The mountains cradle Haven like a protective lover, stoic white peaks and stark lines making it clear that this is not a place anyone approaches lightly, however welcoming its name.

The sound of a hammer on anvil draws me eastward then, toward the smithy. The smith, Harritt, is nice enough I suppose. He is clearly expecting to see me, because he immediately presents me with a new set of armour that he made specially for me. I take it with some little bit of trepidation tempered only by the fact that he bundles me into the adjacent building where he lives and has me put it on, fussing over me with the attentiveness of Junar, Clan Lavellan’s own leather and metalworker. It almost makes me feel at home. I'm still fiddling with the straps and getting used to the feeling of new armour when he goes outside to talk to a Tranquil woman who asks him about some thing or another I don’t catch. I can hear them through the open door, and I listen unabashedly.

The Tranquil are a custom that strikes fear into me, templars cutting mages off from magic forever as a punishment—or whatever justification they find for it. Some of the hunters in my clan used to frighten me with stories of the templars in Kirkwall, and that was _before_ their Knight-Commander went absolutely mad and started slicing up the populace. To be at someone’s mercy so completely that they could sever my connection from my magic and from the Fade at a whim is terrifying. The Tranquil deserve compassion.

But Harritt seems to have contempt in his voice when he tells this woman he’s glad she can’t make trouble.

My stomach feels worse.

After that, I tell him my armour is fine (which it is, warmer than my old gear and certainly finer make) and listen politely while he tells me about the work I can have him do, and then I bolt.

Harritt has to know I’m a mage. My heart gives a jump at how fine the line between a useful mage and a dangerous one is for these humans. I have to walk that line now. The thought fills me with dread.

There’s smoke coming from beyond a small hill just on the other side of where all the soldiers are going through their drills, so I go that direction. I take a zigzag pattern, gathering elfroot out of habit as I walk and tucking bundles of it into my new belt pouch. My feet crunching over the path, I come upon the source of the smoke. The smoke is piping out of a chimney in a good-sized wooden house.

When I open the door, it seems like no one’s there. Leaving a fire burning in a wooden house with no one home? What a terrible idea.

Humans.

I peek around the corner, and there are some notes on the table. They look like they belonged to a Master Taigen, who seems to have been an apothecary. I heard the new apothecary replaced someone. I’d planned to go see the new one anyway, but I was told his name was Adan and not Taigen. Perhaps I should bring the notes with me.

I fold them carefully and leave the house after satisfying myself that it shouldn’t burn down.

At least I now have a plan other than wandering aimlessly throughout Haven and skirting everyone’s stares.

I get directions to the apothecary, who stays all the way up by the Chantry. I feel antsy, like all my meandering around Haven is me trying to convince myself that this is my life now. I never had many friends in my clan, but I miss Keeper Deshanna. She always wanted me to be someone I’m not, but at least she always made space for me, a space where I knew what was expected of me and where at least her expectation fit into everyone else’s spaces, even if I myself didn’t.

Nodding at Varric as I pass him and veer up the hill to the right, my stomach doesn’t want to calm. I pull an elfroot leaf out of my pouch and pop it in my mouth, chewing on it to help settle the rumbling.

The tavern is on my left, with music pouring out of it, sung by a dreamy female voice who manages to sound both clear and contemplative at the same time. I walk past, trying to ignore the stares of the people whose conversations halt the moment I come into view.

I almost miss Solas at the top of the hill. A stone wall hides him from view until I nearly trip over him. He seems lost in thought and almost as startled to see me as I am to see him. I give him a sheepish, tight-lipped smile and continue past him toward the apothecary.

Master Adan is talking to a Chantry cleric and sounding exasperated when I come in. From his almost sharp introduction and gruff manner, I think he’s the author of the patient notes I found on the desk in the house where I woke up. I think it makes me like the man, his desire to bring in templars notwithstanding.

He’s delighted when I hand him Master Taigen’s notes, though. “Old codger was on the edge of a breakthrough,” he crows.

He tells me Taigen died at the Conclave and shows me around his own workspace, letting me know what recipes he has and what he can get for me. The notes I brought him seem to be a recipe for a good lyrium potion.

I’m not used to taking lyrium. Keeper Deshanna had some, of course, for emergencies, but that’s the only experience I’ve had with it. I’m not eager to experiment. I know my mana as it is.

When I leave Adan’s house, Solas is still standing by the stone wall, looking up at the Breach.

“Hello,” I say to him.

“The Chosen of Andraste,” he says with an unreadable smile. “A blessed hero sent to save us all.”

That is not what I expected him to say.

“I didn’t ask for this,” I say uncomfortably, “but someone has to find a way to seal the Breach.”

“Spoken nobly indeed.”

My skin heats, and I feel my face fall.

His own face turns sympathetic. “You think I’m mocking you. This age has made people cynical.”

Oh. He meant it?

Unsure of what else to say, I give him the most winsome smile I can, even though I can feel it’s lopsided. “So a blessed hero, hm? Am I riding in on a shining steed?”

His unreadable smile gives way to actual mirth, and he lets out a short, surprised laugh.

“I would have suggested a griffon, but sadly they’re extinct.” He sobers a little, though there are still small creases at the corners of his eyes. “Joke as you will, but posturing is necessary. I’ve journeyed deep into the Fade in ancient ruins and battlefields to see the dreams of lost civilisations. I’ve watched as hosts of spirits clash to reenact the bloody past in ancient wars both famous and forgotten. Every great war has its heroes. I’m just curious what kind you’ll be.”

Something in me thrills at his words. Another mage who finds the Fade more than just a source of terror and potential possession. I’ve never gone so far as that, but I immediately want to know more. Any time I’ve ever mentioned my own dreams to others, I’m greeted with only confused looks or outright fear.

“What do you mean ruins and battlefields?” I ask him the question carefully, more to feel him out than out of ignorance. I’m a mage and know the Beyond well enough to explore it, in spite of the caution that’s held me back.

And Solas lights up again; clearly I’ve found a subject he likes. “Any building strong enough to withstand the rigors of time has a history. Every battlefield is steeped in death. Both attract spirits. They press against the veil, weakening the barrier between our worlds. When I dream in such places, I go deep into the Fade. I can find memories no other living being has ever seen.”

I’m sure I’m gaping at him, but my face muscles won’t obey me. There’s my dreams, vivid and sometimes strange and, on occasion, eerily prescient. But this is something else.

I meet his gaze with more intensity than I meant to. “I’ve never heard of anyone going that deep into the Fade. That’s extraordinary.”

For a moment, I think I’ve actually shocked him with my reaction. He looks at me a bit closer, then smiles. “Thank you. It’s not a common field of study, for obvious reasons. Not so flashy as throwing fire or lightning. The thrill of finding remnants of a thousand-year-old dream? I would not trade it for anything.”

I can’t blame him. The mere thought fills me with envy. I would love to see such a thing, to be able to catch a glimpse back in time, touch such a marvel. My people have cobbled together what they could of our history and culture, but after millennia of slavery and war, there wasn’t much to cobble, and what remnants have been pieced together are kept rigid, almost as if we fear that adding any more knowledge to it will bring the rest crashing down.

Solas looks like he wants to say something, but he hesitates for a moment before he does. “I will stay then, at least until the Breach has been closed.”

“Was that in doubt?” For some reason, the thought of him leaving nearly panics me. I try to hide it.

“I am an apostate surrounded by Chantry forces, and unlike you, I do not have a divine mark protecting me.” He glances in the direction of the Chantry itself with distaste. “Cassandra has been accommodating, but you understand my caution.”

I do, all too well. For a few moments I had let myself forget that I am also an apostate in their eyes, and whether it’s that underlying wave of fear or something else, I feel the overwhelming urge to communicate to him that he can trust me.

Perhaps it’s that I so desperately need someone to trust myself.

“You came here to help, Solas. I won’t let them use that against you.” My voice comes out surprisingly steady.

“How would you stop them?” His own cynicism is back in force. His blue-grey eyes look serene in his somehow ageless face, but his lips are set like someone who has been let down one too many times.

I remember his words to me again, about the Dalish spurning him for trying to share knowledge.

“However I had to,” I answer, vehemently enough to surprise myself yet again.

“Thank you,” he says, giving me that look again, like he’s reassessing me for the fourth time in this short conversation. “For now, let us hope either the mages or the templars have the power to seal the Breach.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Eek, this first real conversation with Solas hits my feelers, especially in the context of...well...everything that happens after. He clearly isn't expecting to find any kind of connection with anyone here, not meaningfully. And my Lavellan is in desperate need of just that. She may be shy, lonely, and uncertain, but she will fight for others, including him. I wanted to use a little more dialogue than the tree in-game allows, because I feel like it can add richness to their interactions and more layers, so I hope you like it!


	8. A Way Forward

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first steps of the path ahead appear before Ilaana, but she is surprised by an unexpected kinship that threatens to throw her backward instead.

After leaving Solas, I return to my small house, where I pace restlessly until it’s time to return to the Chantry. By the time I go back, I’m thoroughly nervous again. What if they change their mind and greet me like a wanted criminal again? What if I spend tonight in chains?

But when I find Cassandra at the door to the chantry, she simply smiles at me and motions at me to follow. She moves with the same kind of confidence Keeper Deshanna does. Years of training her body and mind show in her fluid walk.

What shows in mine? I glance involuntarily down at my hand again.

Cassandra nods to it. “Does it trouble you?”

That’s a good question.

I go ahead and say the first thing that comes to mind, since it’s true.

“It’s stopped spreading, and it doesn’t hurt.”

The Seeker gives me another small smile. “We take our victories where we can.” She pauses. “What’s important is that your mark is now stable, as is the Breach. You’ve given us time, and Solas believes that a second attempt might succeed—provided the mark has more power. The same level of power used to open the Breach in the first place. That is not easy to come by.”

Here we go. Something about this is beyond anxiety or nerves. For most of my life I’ve had the burden of expectation, of responsibility on me. This is a hundred times—a _thousand_ times—more than all of those years put together. But it feels different. Something in me rises to it. With all my responsibility before, with all the years of training as First, there was always an end in sight. I would become my clan’s Keeper, and I would live out my life as such.

Perhaps that’s what it is I feel right now, pulling me to stand up straighter, taller. There is no set path here. I can forge my own.

I grin at her. “What harm could there be in powering up something we barely understand?”

The Seeker coughs a laugh. “Hold on to _that_ sense of humour!”

I follow her into the room at the end of the Chantry, where the pale, blond templar stands beside Leliana and a brown-skinned woman with black hair and mustard yellow silks, awaiting us.

“May I present Commander Cullen, leader of the Inquisition’s forces,” Cassandra says, indicating the feathered blond man.

So many feathers. Why on earth is he wearing so many feathers? They’re so…floofy.

“Such as they are,” Cullen says from his feathery nest with a bit of a wink that turns somber an instant later. “We lost many soldiers in the valley, and I fear many more before this is through.”

I nod to him. He is handsome, in a very predictable human sort of way. His features are even, and his brown eyes are warm. A scar cuts deep into the right side of his face, creasing his upper lip just a bit. But he stands somewhat stiffly, and it’s not the feathered armour. This man has known deep pain. Yet he is here, in full knowledge there will be more. I instantly respect him for that, templar or no.

Cassandra is moving on. “This is Lady Josephine Montilyet, our ambassador and chief diplomat.”

The woman in yellow silks gives me a shy smile. “Andaran atish’an,” she says.

“You speak elven?” I can’t keep the shock from my voice.

“You’ve just heard the entirety of it, I’m afraid.”

Of course. I return her smile, my small hope dashed.

“And of course you know Sister Leliana,” Cassandra says.

Leliana steps forward. “My position here involves a degree of—”

“She is our spymaster,” Cassandra interrupts.

“Yes.” Leliana sighs. “Tactfully put, Cassandra.”

I’ve never felt so out of place in my life, but somehow I don’t mind.

“That’s an impressive bunch of titles.” Well done, Ilaana. They’ll love that.

If they thought I was awkward, it doesn’t show. Cassandra clearly has an agenda for this meeting.

“I mentioned that your mark needs more power to close the Breach for good,” she says.

“Which means we must approach the rebel mages for help.” Leliana says it so matter-of-factly that I can’t help but like her more.

“And I still disagree,” Cullen breaks in. “The templars could serve just as well.”

Figures, since he is one, isn’t he? I heard he was one, didn’t I? He looks like one. I just assumed he was one.

“We need power, Commander. Enough magic poured into that mark—” The Seeker, at least, seems not to have committed to one side or the other for now, but before she can finish, Cullen interrupts her.

“Might destroy us all. Templars could suppress the Breach, weaken it, so—”

“Pure speculation.” Leliana’s turn to interrupt. I think I like this shemlen woman.

“ _I_ was a templar,” Cullen insists, confirming my muddled suspicion.

The ambassador drums her fingers on her mobile desk. The candle stuck into a holder at its top gutters, then flares again.

“Unfortunately, neither group will even speak to us yet,” Josephine says with perfunctory precision. “The Chantry has denounced the Inquisition—and you, specifically.”

I think of the awe the people of Haven showed me not days after spitting at the sight of me. I can imagine how the Chantry might not care for my sudden elevation in their esteem.

“That didn’t take long,” I say.

Cullen snorts. “Shouldn’t they be busy arguing over who’s going to become Divine?”

Josephine looks at me, her eyes glowing in the light of her candle. “Some are calling you—a Dalish elf—the Herald of Andraste. That frightens the Chantry. The remaining clerics have declared it blasphemy, and we heretics for harbouring you.”

“Chancellor Roderick’s doing, no doubt,” Cassandra says. She looks like she wishes she’d put _him_ in chains.

“It limits our options,” agrees Josephine. “Approaching the mages or templars for help is currently out of the question.”

“Just how am _I_ the Herald of Andraste?” This is the question that’s been burning at the edges of my missing-memory mind.

Cassandra leans on the table. “People saw what you did at the temple, how you stopped the Breach from growing. They have also heard about the woman seen in the rift when we first found you. They believe that was Andraste.”

My heart gives a thud. The murmurs when I first approached the Chantry after we returned from the Breach—someone said something like that. Blessed Mythal, I don’t like this.

“Even if we tried to stop that view from spreading—” Leliana begins.

“Which we have not,” Cassandra says.

“The point is, everyone is talking about you.” Leliana gives me that sympathetic look again.

“It’s quite the title, isn’t it?” Cullen looks at me sideways, his own half-smile curious. “How do you feel about that?”

“I’m no herald of anything,” I say honestly. “Particularly Andraste.”

He laughs, a short sound. “I’m sure the Chantry would agree.”

He’s strangely charming, this one. His lack of reverence is refreshing.

Cassandra looks disappointed, and that is almost as uncomfortable as the title. What does she want me to do, proclaim that her god or prophet (or whoever Andraste is supposed to be) actually helped me? When I don’t even remember? Humans are so bizarre.

Leliana, at least, seems to find the root of the matter. “People are desperate for a sign of hope. For some, you are that sign.”

“And to others, a symbol of everything that’s gone wrong.” Josephine taps her pen on her paper.

As ambassador, I imagine she’ll be dealing with the brunt of people who believe the latter.

“They aren’t more concerned about the Breach? The real threat?” I again resist the urge to try and see the hole in the sky through the ceiling. These Chantry clerics seem more and more like a person arguing about the colour of their rescuers’ coats when their house is burning down around them.

“They do know it’s a threat,” Cullen says. “They just don’t think we can stop it.”

“The Chantry is telling everyone that you’ll make it worse,” Josephine adds helpfully.

I guess she saves her tact for the people outside the Inquisition. I can’t say I blame her.

“There is something you can do,” Leliana says. “A Chantry cleric by the name of Mother Giselle has asked to speak to you. She is not far, and she knows those involved far better than I. Her assistance could be invaluable.”

“I’ll see what she has to say,” I tell them. What else can I do?

“You’ll find Mother Giselle tending to the wounded in the Hinterlands near Redcliffe,” Leliana says.

She gestures to the enormous maps of Ferelden and Orlais spread out across the table. It indeed looks as though Mother Giselle is rather close, just down the mountains from Haven.

“Look for other opportunities to expand the Inquisition’s influence while you’re there,” Cullen says.

Josephine clearly agrees. “We need agents to extend our reach beyond this valley, and you’re better suited than anyone to recruit them.”

“In the meantime, let’s think of other options.” Cassandra looks to me, her face unreadable. “I won’t leave this all to the Herald.”

And just like that, I have my own title. It makes me want to squirm.

With that, the rest of the meeting consists of them talking me through the logistics and infrastructure of our fledgling Inquisition.

After, I go to Minaeve, a young elf woman who I’m told is studying beasts and demons through whatever they leave behind. In the midst of showing her the bits of dreamer rags I recovered at the rifts, she tells me how much she loves to study. I am surprised to hear that she’s a mage from the Circle.

But when I tell her that she might have had a smoother path of study among the People, her tone goes as flat and cold as a sheet of iron left in the snow.

“Don’t let my lack of vallaslin fool you, _lethallin_ ,” she says, and so much venom drips from the last word that I take half a step backward. “I was a proud member of my clan before my magic manifested. You know what happens when they have too many mages.They gave me a pack and sent me into the woods to find my own life.I was seven years old.”

They did _what_? She says it as if I have to know this is what the Dalish do—I can’t imagine. Keeper Deshanna would _never_ do such a horrific thing.

Would she?

When my magic manifested, there were no others aside from the Keeper with magic in the clan. It was celebrated—if warily—and I’ve never heard of this. How could they do such a thing to a child?

Minaeve is going on.

“I stumbled into a village, starving and cold, a few weeks later.I’d started using magic to scare predators away.The villagers saw me make fire in my fist.They were terrified and wanted to kill me.Templars saved me from them.They gave me food and clothes, and took me to the Circle.I’ve seen what life is like without the templars, and I want no part of it.I just want to study.”

I’m so shocked and horrified that I don’t know how to react other than, “I’m so sorry.”

I want to tell her my clan wasn’t like that, that I’ve never heard of such atrocious behaviour. But that would do nothing to change her experience except remind her how horrible it was. Which I’ve already done. I fumble through the rest of the conversation with little memory of what words pass between us.

By the time I head back to my small house, where a fire is well-tended and cheerfully burning without having reduced the house to cinders, I am ready to collapse.

So why, when I lie back on my bed to sleep, can I not think of anything but finding out what Solas thinks of all this?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Minaeve's words hurt every time I hear them. She is so wounded, even though she appears to have found a path she likes. I imagine what it would be like to be Lavellan hearing such a thing from someone who is so like herself. Seeing our own people through the eyes of who they have hurt can be a painful thing, and sometimes it can open up in ourselves the way we ourselves have been hurt by them.


	9. And A Ways Back

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Plagued by exhaustion--body and mind--Ilaana needs to sleep and can't. Instead she is stuck thinking over the parts of her life she has simply expected: feeling like an alien amid her own clan and now finds herself wondering about the others she has heard of along the way who have walked similar paths.

It takes me a long time trying to fall asleep before I give up altogether and get out of bed. Everything is so foreign here, from the way they sleep to the food they eat and the way they eat it.

I don’t know where I fit. If I even fit anywhere.

Sitting on the edge of my bed, I rest my face in my hands. The lines of my vallaslin are slightly raised. Not noticeably to anyone looking, but I can feel them when I run my fingertips over them, tracing the design that dedicated me to Mythal now almost fifteen years ago.

When the Keeper asked me to meditate on the design of my vallaslin, I almost panicked at the time. Some part of me still wants to panic. I always had more questions than the Keeper had answers. Satisfying answers, anyway.

I think it is the wolf jawbone Solas wears that is digging into these memories.

Restless, I get up and poke the fire, adding some smaller bits of wood until it is blazing again. The flames are a comfort. My mana responds to them, but I let it flow, flickering along with them.

Once when I was a child, I wandered off without anyone in the clan noticing where I went. I was young, perhaps barely digging my toes into my seventh summer, but I remember a sense of curiosity drawing me onward. It was before we crossed the Waking Sea to the Free Marches. We would have been somewhere in Ferelden, long before the Blight, paying no attention to kings or squabbles with Orlais. I don’t know where we were, but I remember hills and tracing veins of rain-wet serpentstone with my child hands because the sun peeked out through the parting clouds and it shone blue-green in the light. I don’t remember much aside from feeling tired and seeing an enormous wolf statue I didn’t connect to the People at the time, since I’d never seen one like it. I fell asleep to the sound of water, comforting tingles on my skin. One of the hunters found me some hours later, curled up between the front paws of the statue, using one outstretched wolf leg as a pillow.

Sometimes I think that is why my clan always whispered about me, as if the wanderings of a child spoke some deeper truth that I did not belong with them. As I grew older, I was careful never to make those whispers louder. I didn’t always succeed.

When I learned about the wolf statue, I understood some of their whispers, to a point. Superstitions are powerful things among the Dalish, and that statue was one of Fen’Harel, the Dread Wolf. The Dalish spend a lot of time trying to avoid so much as a glance in his direction—and I, child Ilaana in my ignorance, fell asleep in his arms.

Perhaps some Dalish would laugh at such a thing, but my clan did not. My magic manifested not long after. As it happened, wolves howled that night around our camp, spooking the halla. The Keeper herself had to quiet the mutters among the hunters.

That was why my magic was celebrated only warily, even though by appearances it was sorely needed.

And then, not long before I got my vallaslin almost ten years later, I was exploring an old ruin with Anuon, the closest thing to a friend I had. I’m not sure what the ruin was. A bath, perhaps, or a simple temple.

I can hear Anuon’s shocked voice.

“What is that doing here?” Anuon was scandalised, and I was still a couple paces behind her, where I couldn’t see what she was talking about.

“What is what doing here?” I turned the corner, and then I saw what she saw.

It sat at Mythal’s feet as if standing guard, proud and confident unlike the statue of Fen’Harel we kept at our camp. It was almost identical to the statue I’d napped upon so many years before. Seeing it sent a shock of memory through me, bringing to the surface something that I hadn’t been sure wasn’t simply a dream. The memory clouded my senses, set me adrift. I wasn’t able to form the right answers fast enough.

Vines grew around both statues, draping them with green leaves like finery. The statues themselves looked as though they could have been carved yesterday. I wanted to go closer, to touch them. I took a step forward without thinking, but stopped short at the next thing Anuon said.

“Why is the Dread Wolf defiling a sanctum of Mythal?” Anuon’s voice came out strangled.

“It looks like it belongs here,” I’d said softly, not hearing myself.

Anuon had turned on me then, nearly spinning on one heel. “There is no way that is true.”

That was one of the first times I remember feeling that particular type of confusion. Here we were, standing in an ancient ruin of our ancestors, and in spite of evidence directly in front of my friend’s eyes, she was ready to believe whatever she’d been told instead. The statues looked immovable, implacable. They had been built together, carved from the same stone.

But when I met her gaze, what I saw in it was fear. Not of me, but of something else. Change, maybe. Or challenge.

I never told anyone the reason behind my vallaslin, but that was it—for me it was a symbol of Mythal’s justice and being open to change. If someone in our past had trusted the Dread Wolf to sit at the feet of Mythal herself, it meant there were things we did not know, but could learn. Justice and change. The former would be welcome in my clan as long as it fit their perception of it. The latter, punishable.

Now, crouched on a still-unfamiliar floor in a still-unfamiliar human village, I can’t help thinking of it again.

We’re so protective over everything we’ve gathered from the ashes of Arlathan, but what if we’ve gotten it all wrong? Would we even be _willing_ to change, to adapt?

I think I know the answer to that, and it’s why I left. It’s why I think the Keeper suggested I go at all. For years she’s talked about the loss of Neria Mahariel, the Hero of Ferelden. With some pride, but also a sense of loss, like the Dalish lost a hero and the humans gained one. And that’s not even including Merrill Sabrae’s story, another infamous Dalish woman lost to the human world, though in her case she is simply harellan. A betrayer whose forays into blood magic cost her clan their lives, at the side of the Champion of Kirkwall, another human.

And now there’s me.

I see Solas’s necklace again. Wolves. They seem to always follow me.

After I found those statues with Anuon, I tried to learn as much as I could from the Keeper and any other sources I found, mostly in snippets. Our storyteller mentioned in passing once that the word _harel_ can mean rebel as much as it can mean betrayer, but I don’t think he believed it relevant to the names we attach it to. Merrill is no Dread Wolf, and I think few would put that word upon Neria Mahariel, but I wonder if they will push it upon me.

A Dalish First, the Herald of Andraste. Creators, but “herald” almost even _sounds_ like “harel”.

I can’t tell in this moment if I simply _need_ to believe my leaving wasn’t a betrayal or if I am simply making a choice to find my own path for the first time in the entirety of my life.

I think that is what it is. Can that be a betrayal? Can being true to myself be a betrayal of people who never sought to know me?

These questions unsettle me all the more.

I take a deep breath, smelling the wisp of smoke from the fire and the still-strange indoor smells of wood and dust.

Perhaps Solas wearing a wolf’s jawbone means nothing. Perhaps it’s simply a way to get in a dig at the Dalish who spurned his desire to share things they feared would mean their lives would change. Perhaps he simply found it somewhere in his travels and liked it.

Or perhaps he’s like me or like Neria, like Merrill or Minaeve. Floundering without a place in a world that doesn’t want him.

Perhaps he’s someone else with one foot in one world and the other in another.

Peace steals over me at the thought. It is somehow comforting, even though I of course have no way of being certain that my assumption of his reasoning is correct.

I climb back into bed under the coverlet, pulling it up to my chin. I like the softness of the bed, the way the weight of the layered blankets cradles me.

Finally, sleep finds me.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Dalish are often presented as fairly uniform, with the exception of Merrill and Feynriel's mother, perhaps. Proud and unified, with a singular purpose. I wanted to play my Lavellan as someone who found herself othered within that unity, and the dual weight of expectations both as a member of a clan and her Keeper's First competing with the knowledge that the clan never had truly accepted her.
> 
> It's also something I wanted to explore in the lore of Fen'Harel. In Inquisition we come across so many different kinds of ruins. The statue in Ilaana's memory is a familiar one, its location hinted at with the accompanying minerals. I thought that tying that in, making that place even more significant, was fitting for Ilaana. She is so lost right now.
> 
> (Am I imagining that Minaeve also uses "lethallin" for Inky regardless of gender? I feel pretty sure. I am aware there's meant to be a grammatical distinction between in/an/en, and that apparently Solas doing it at the veilfire torch is a glitch, but I headcanon that the ancient elves dngaf. Which Minaeve is not. It's not a huge thing, and there are more obvious obstacles with the linguistics, but...)


	10. Who Are Your People?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lavellan attempts to answer a question and finds a very unexpected response.

The next morning, I go to Solas first thing. He looks surprised to see me. I’m not sure my mere existence has ever been such a shock to anyone as it seems to be in Haven to everyone.

He greets me with a quiet, “Hello.”

There’s a question in his eyes.

“I’d be interested in hearing your opinions on elven culture,” I say before I lose my nerve.

“I thought you’d be more interested in sharing your own opinions on elven culture. You are Dalish, are you not?”

There is that again.

I hesitate, floundering. Some part of me is angry, protective over my clan and the only people I ever knew as mine before now. But I remember Minaeve’s words too clearly, the tone in her voice as she said _lethallin_.

For some reason, my rotted harellan of a tongue decides humour is the best reply. “What’s your problem with the Dalish? Allergic to halla?”

“They are children acting out stories misheard and repeated wrongly a thousand times.” His answer is so close to what I thought myself last night that I panic.

“Oh, but you know the truth, right?” It comes out with an wild edge I don’t mean.

“While they pass on stories, mangling details, I walk the Fade. I have seen things they have not.”

My heart already has cracks, I am finding, cracks my own people are driving deeper and more brittle as I see them for the first time through the eyes of others they should have greeted as kin. I think of Minaeve at the vulnerable age of seven, turned loose as both elf and mage in a hostile, cruel world that hates both of those things, left to fend for herself. And I remember what Solas said the first hour I met him, when he said he came offering knowledge and was spurned for no reason other than superstition. I believe them. I believe them both. Our hunters so often attack anyone they meet; that they would do this to—

I shake myself, and my tongue manages the words I truly want to say. “Ir abelas, hahren. If the Dalish have done you a disservice, I would make that right. What course would you set for them that is better than what they know now?”

I half expect him not to give me any further answers, though I want to know. My face feels like I’ve aimed my own immolation spell at it, and Solas, who last night I was ready to imagine as a kindred spirit, seems to not see me as the same. Shame is hot and greasy. I should go.

But he speaks, interrupting my embarrassed thoughts.

“You are right, of course,” he says gently, haltingly. “The fault is mine for expecting what the Dalish could never truly accomplish. Ir abelas…da’len. If I can offer any understanding, you have but to ask.”

I want to ask. I do. There is nothing I want more than to ask someone who might truly know, away from what anyone else might think.

I am caught by my own shyness, however. I stutter a “we’ll talk later,” and scurry away down the sloping path. What he must think of me.

There is too much noise, too many people in Haven. I let my feet take me down the hill as fast as they’ll carry me without running, past Varric again, out through both sets of gates and beyond. Cassandra and Cullen are both training and working—Cassandra looks like she’s trying to turn her practice dummies into sawdust with the power of her glare alone—but I hurry by them, hoping neither say anything to me.

They don’t. I escape.

My heart feels lighter the moment I’m alone, the din of Haven receding behind me.

I don’t know what to think about any of this. The thought of my people harming _our people_ out of their own pride or misguided—I can’t put words to it. It hurts. It hurts because I know how it feels.

Who are our people, if we behave so to each other? Who are my people? My feet teeter beneath me. I don’t have answers to that.

The little house where I found Master Taigen’s notes is still empty, chimney smoking, but I go past it. Once I’m through the wooden palisade behind it, my boots crunching in the snow, my chest heaves.

I gasp in air. My shoulders shake. Huge, gulping sobs wrack my body. I stumble through the snow, throwing my hand out to catch myself on the trunk of a tree. Its rough, cold bark holds me in this world only barely. There are few tears falling from my eyes, but those that do are hot on my cheek and sting my eyes before they leave.

It feels like the Breach has taken up residence in my chest. There is a hole there. It’s been there for so long.

My whole life I’ve thought that I was wrong, that I was the thing that didn’t fit with my people. I’ve heard their whispers and their outright comments disapproving of me being the Keeper’s First.

 _She is hardly one of us,_ one of the hunters said once. _Ask her a question and she freezes like a nug caught in the sight of an arrow._

A quiet footfall sounds in the snow behind me, and I half-spin.

Oh, no.

It’s him.

Solas followed me.

He takes one look at my face and freezes. He hovers for a moment as if this has suddenly turned down an unfamiliar road and he has lost his map.

“I fear I have caused you some pain, and that was not my intention,” he says after a beat, perhaps realising he trapped himself into this by following. “I allowed my own experience with the Dalish to paint my expectation of you, and that was wrong of me. I apologise.”

He steps closer, hesitating just a moment. Then Solas reaches into a pocket and hands me a folded handkerchief, and I take it because I don’t know what else to do.

“It’s not you,” I manage to get out.

Haven is too loud, and here it is too quiet. My ragged breathing is the only sound.

I can’t seem to get a full breath, and I’m still crying. The tears are just…dripping down my cheeks and won’t stop. I have never been this humiliated to be seen by someone, but there is nothing in him that looks ready to mock. He instead looks at me curiously, his brow furrowed with compassion I don’t think I expected to see.

“It’s not you.” I say it again, then force myself onward between hiccups. “It’s—I—it’s that I understand why you feel how you do. About the Dalish.”

And then it’s pouring out of me. I tell him about my childhood self falling asleep between the paws of Fen’Harel. I tell him about the other statues, about my training as First, about asking questions and getting no answers. I tell him about the whispers and the comments and the relief I saw in my people’s eyes—my _clan,_ my _people,_ even my _parents_ —when I left for the conclave. I tell him that I felt they were wishing I would never return.

Perhaps they forced me out as much as Minaeve’s clan forced her.

I’ve never told anyone, and I shouldn’t be telling him. I barely know him.

But he’s listening.

He’s just _listening_. His face is open and tender, not pitying, but understanding. He beckons to me once when I pause, and then he leads me to the empty house, where it is warm. We sit, both cross-legged on the floor, and he continues to listen. Sometimes he asks me questions, soft ones, not judging.

Even though it’s not my story to tell, I tell him what Minaeve told me. I tell him of my horror, the shame that accompanied it. His eyes darken with rage at her treatment, and in that small moment, I’m not alone.

We talk for some time. The light in the room changes.

“I never fit with my clan,” I say finally. “I always thought it was because there was something wrong with me. There are things I love about them, but I was endlessly on the outside. My training to be Keeper kept me apart anyway, but instead of setting me apart to do respected work, it simply kept me isolated.”

It’s quiet for a moment except for the crackling of the fire.

“I am sorry,” I say. “I have never said any of this out loud before now.”

“It is I who followed you when you wanted to be alone. I simply did not wish to leave things as we had. I had no desire to make you feel ashamed in any way,” Solas says. He looks a little bewildered as he said it, like he’s not truly sure what made his feet move after me. “You did not ask for the role you were given. You are here now, helping, because you feel it is the right thing to do, even if it costs you everything. That is…admirable.”

There is another silence.

“Ma serranas,” I say. “I’m not used to being surrounded by humans, and worse still is the way they look at me. I think I preferred it when they just wanted me dead.”

Solas cracks a smile, but not one that makes me feel he’s laughing at me. Rather I think he understands somehow what I mean.

“Things are simpler when someone wants you dead,” he says. He pauses, his gaze drifting toward the fire. “Would it help you to know more of our people? Would that be of use to you, in healing some of the hurt you feel?”

Our people. Our. I think in that moment he is asking two things at once. Or perhaps he is both asking me and telling me that it could heal some of his own, to share with a willing listener, as he has been for me.

“I can’t think of anything I’d like more, Solas,” I tell him truthfully.

“Then we shall speak more,” he says, again looking as if I’ve surprised him and as if he’s surprised himself. “Another day, though, for that. I think we’ve hit that raw nerve enough for one morning. If you’d like to speak of other things, though, I was planning to eat my midday meal alone and would welcome the company.”

His kindness wipes away the last clinging vestiges of my embarrassment.

“Thank you,” I tell him again.

“You have nothing to thank me for.”

He stands, then holds out a hand to pull me to my feet. His hand is strong, calloused without being rough.

With that, our conversation turns to lighter things, to magical techniques, to curiosities and shared interests, and the weight I have carried for what seems like my entire life lifts with it. When we finally part, he tells me to keep the handkerchief.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One of the most striking aspects of Solas as a character for me is how quick he is to adapt to new information. When challenged in his assumptions, he will often admit when he is wrong. He is not afraid to apologise. That trait is one of the things that draws me to him. I detest it when people, particularly men, act like experts when they are not, but to me Solas is the opposite. He is an expert in a great many things with experience and knowledge few in his entire world could even hope to rival--yet he values being challenged, and he will reshape his thoughts when presented with a way of thinking he hasn't explored. He cares when people are in pain, and he responds kindly to those who help them.
> 
> That's the Solas I know, and that's the Solas Ilaana is coming to know herself.


	11. A Poor Place to Work Out Differences

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ilaana finds hope in people who do not fear change.

There is already an Inquisition camp set up by the time I venture down the mountain road into the Hinterlands with Solas, Cassandra, and Varric. A dwarven scout with freckles and the ginger hair to match meets us when we arrive, finishing a conversation and moving toward us. Other scouts crouch around the camp, looking around or elbowing each other and speaking in low voices.

It’s a sunny day, warmer than Haven but still chilly. The trees around us are a comfort. Something in me relaxes to be near them.

But instead of birdsong, I hear the sound of shouting and the distinct clash of swords.

Solas stands at my left, Varric and Cassandra beside him as the redheaded scout closes the distance between us.

“Herald of Andraste,” the freckled scout greets me in an awed voice. “I’ve heard the stories. Everyone has. We know what you did at the Breach. It’s odd for a Dalish elf to care about anyone else, but you’ll get no back talk here. That’s a promise. Inquisition Scout Lace Harding, at your service. I—well, all of us here—we’ll do whatever we can to help.”

“Harding, huh?” Varric says with a half-cough. “Ever been to Kirkwall’s Hightown?”

“I can’t say I have. Why?” She looks at him curiously.

Oh, gods. Doesn’t he have a book—

“You’d be _Harding_ in—eh. Never mind.” Varric deflates, scuffing his foot on the ground. He does that a lot. Maybe it’s a nervous tic.

“Ugh,” says Cassandra. She also says that a lot. Mostly to Varric.

I’m just going to let that lie there.

“I’m starting to worry about these stories that everyone’s heard,” I say.

“Oh, there’s nothing to worry about,” Scout Harding says with a nervous laugh that makes me believe the precise opposite. “They only say you’re the last great hope for Thedas.”

“Oh. Wonderful.” Sometimes I hate being right.

Harding’s tone turns somber. “The Hinterlands are as good a place as any to start…fixing things. We came to secure horses from Redcliffe’s old horsemaster. I grew up here, and people always said that Dennet’s herds were the strongest and the fastest this side of the Frostbacks. But with the mage-templar fighting getting worse, we couldn’t get to Dennet. Maker only knows if he’s even still alive. Mother Giselle’s at the Crossroads helping refugees and the wounded. Our latest reports say that the war’s spread there too. Corporal Vale and our men are doing what they can to protect the people, but they won’t be able to hold out very long. You’d best get going. No time to lose.”

She turns away with a sympathetic grimace at that last.

I glance at Solas, whose face is about as resigned as a face can be.

Well. She said no time to lose.

I head straight downhill. It’s steep, but I can pick a path down easily enough.

“Watch your step,” Varric says, and I’m not sure it’s for my benefit or Cassandra’s.

Slipping easily down the side of the hill, my feet find a path between rocks and tree roots, and I beat the others to the bottom. Solas has an amused half-smile tugging at the corner of his mouth as he hops the remaining few feet down to me, and Varric and Cassandra are still a third of the way up the hill, seemingly concentrating very hard on their feet.

Perhaps I overestimated their hill descending abilities. Belatedly, I see the end of a path branching up to the camp, and my face warms. Oops.

My staff is settled between my shoulders, and I consider readying it now. There are sounds of fighting in the distance, but it’s not close enough to worry yet.

“Mother Giselle should be close by,” Varric says when he finally reaches the bottom of the hill, squinting southward at the winding path.

I nod, moving toward the path. It weaves between boulders, and immediately when we’ve gone no more than a few paces, the sounds of fighting get louder, thrown our way by the tunnel of rock.

I do want my staff in my hands now, even though I’m hemmed in by the boulders. A short distance ahead, the kneeling form of an impaled mage greets us, a semicircle of scorched templars surrounding him. His eyes stare forward into the rock opposite him.

Shuddering, I look away. A shiver dances across my nerves. This war is asinine, and it is claiming too many lives.

We’ve no sooner left the funnel of stone behind when Cassandra says urgently, “Inquisition forces—look at this! The apostates have gone mad with power!”

Indignation flashes through me. The impaled mage is too fresh in my mind.

“The templars aren’t looking any better here,” Varric says.

I shoot him a grateful look. And he’s right. Coming toward us are a group of templars.

“Hold! We are not apostates!” Cassandra hails them.

They do not stop. In seconds, they’ve engaged the Inquisition soldiers.

“I do not think they care, Seeker!” Solas shouts.

The increasingly-familiar energy of his barrier springs up around me, and I take a deep breath.

I’ve never fought templars before.

Whirling my staff, I send Winter’s Grasp at one of the advancing templars just as Solas freezes the one next to him. The rushing _crack_ of their armour, suddenly chilled, is disproportionately loud even amid the shouts and the clang of Cassandra’s sword working counterpoint to the twang of Varric’s crossbow.

I don’t pause. My mana is flowing, moving, alive. I reach for lightning this time, and it responds, leaping between the frozen templars, shattering one of them where he stopped.

It’s over almost before it truly began, but we don’t have time to regroup, because the Inquisition forces just down the road are calling out an alarm. This time it’s apostates, and Solas attempts to pacify them just as Cassandra did with the templars, and to similar lack of effect.

They don’t seem to care or even notice that they’re fighting other mages, I realise in horror. What must the Circles be like, to drive them to this?

The fireball I loose in a mage’s direction heats the air in front of my face before it vanishes, and I again see the Tranquil in Haven, the one Harritt treated so callously.

I already have the answer to my own question. And still it stings with every spell I send in the apostates’ direction.

I’ve never fought people like this. Not like this.

Time blurs as we fight, the sound of dying slowly fading until the Crossroads are, if not quiet, filled with a different kind of pain.

We regroup, then, asking directions from soldiers who are not too injured to answer, and finally we come upon Mother Giselle. She is soothing a wounded soldier who is protesting the use of magic for healing his own wounds. She has kind eyes, warm brown skin. She manages to look serene in spite of the chaos so recently calmed around her.

“Turned to noble purpose, it is surely no more evil than your blade,” she is saying gently when I walk up to her. “Hush, dear boy. Allow them to ease your suffering.”

Her accent is Orlesian, her tone soft. She glances up at me when I approach, and in her eyes I see neither the awe I am coming to fear nor the disgust that is becoming wearying. Her eyes hold only curiosity.

She rises, turning toward me.

“Mother Giselle?” I ask.

“I am. And you must be the one they are calling the Herald of Andraste.”

Mother Giselle says it without attaching the weight of her own expectation to it. It is a welcome respite for me. My shoulders ache, but I stand straight, turning to walk with her along the path.

I feel that honesty is the best path here. “Not through any choice of mine,” I tell her simply.

She chuckles. “We seldom have much say in our fate, I’m sad to say.”

“So you agree with them?” I try not to gape at her.

“I don’t presume to know the Maker’s intentions, for any of us,” she says. “But I did not ask you here simply to debate with me.”

I listen then as she urges me to travel to Val Royeaux in Orlais to address the Chantry clerics directly. I think that surely that cannot work, but Mother Giselle proves to be more savvy than her gentle demeanour would suggest.

“Let me put it this way,” she tells me. “You do not need to convince them. You just need some of them to…doubt. Their power is their unified voice. Take that from them, and you will receive the time you need.”

For her, the Chantry must be as dear a thing as Mythal’s temple was to Anuon, yet here I am, standing in front of her with vallaslin clear upon my face and the title of the Herald of Andraste heavy upon my shoulders, and this woman does not shake or falter. Instead of being threatened by my existence, she has chosen to help me, whatever change I or the Inquisition may bring.

“Thank you,” I tell her, and I mean it with all my heart.

For someone like her not to fear such tremendous change takes strength beyond the abilities of most.

Perhaps this will even work. Perhaps I can walk this tightrope between Chantry and Breach.

I return to camp with a lighter step, even though the path is uphill.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love Mother Giselle, even though sometimes she makes me want to bang my head on a wall. I think that in her quiet way, she is one of the most powerful characters in the game, and even though Lavellan is so different from her, I wanted to show a connection there, and a meaningful one.


	12. Pouncer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Ilaana doesn't listen to her own words before she says them.

The next few days are spent at the Crossroads. I wander slowly, listening more than anything else. A hunter is concerned about feeding all the refugees. One of the other scouts on the West Road is fretting over keeping them warm. Corporal Vale is in desperate need of a healer. A whisper of a Grey Warden in the area. Rifts. A man pleading for someone to venture south to find his son for a potion his wife needs to breathe. And, of course, the warring templars and mages just beyond the small oasis of peace we’ve bought the heart of the Hinterlands.

A list grows in my mind of hurts smaller than the Breach, things I can help with while I wait for the journey to Val Royeaux to be arranged.

We’re back at the outskirts camp one morning, and I am sipping my tea, sitting on a fallen log that overlooks the fields to the south. Away from the bustle of the scouts, it is almost peaceful. Last night I dreamed and allowed myself to explore the Fade. It was restless—I could feel the pull of the Breach even there. But it was different in other ways. Quieter. I hardly caught so much as a glimpse of a wisp, let alone any other spirits. With the rifts and the Breach, I hardly blame them for keeping their distance, especially this close to Haven.

The time to myself was soothing, though. Perhaps I should feel guilty for thinking it, but I don’t.

“You look far more content than one might expect—I wouldn’t let Cassandra see you.” It’s Solas, and he perches on the other end of the log from me. I didn’t hear him approach.

“I’ll practice looking more dour and weighed down,” I say, smiling shyly.

He smiles back. How is it possible for me to both relax and get more nervous around him at the same time?

“If you find a moment of peace, I will certainly not be the one to tell you to crush it,” he says, his eyes searching over the field ahead of us.

He’s sharing a tent with Varric, and I with Cassandra. For one fleeting moment, I wish he would instead share mine, though why I am not sure. Some of the others in my clan would sometimes sleep in the aravels of their friends, and I would hear them giggling late into the night.

The thought of giggling late into the night in a tent with Solas with Cassandra barking at Varric to stop snoring two thin layers of canvas away is so absurd it almost makes me laugh out loud.

Not _precisely_ that, anyway.

“It is nice here,” I say, sipping from my tea to disguise the blush I can feel creeping into my cheeks. “In another time it would be peaceful indeed.”

I wiggle my toes in the grasses beneath my feet. My boots are beside me—soon enough I’ll have to put them on, I suppose—but for now I enjoy the sensation of the earth on my skin. Half a glance to my left shows me that Solas’s feet are also bare.

“Indeed,” he says softly. I wonder what he is thinking. A moment later, he goes on. “I think perhaps if hunting rams is your goal, we will find them to the south.”

“Oh?” I’m caught off guard by the change of subject. “Why is that?”

His amused half-smile returns, and he points. “There is a pair of them just past the field.”

Sure enough, there are two rams just on the other side of a crumbling stone wall on the other side of the half-overgrown field. They don’t seem to have noticed us yet.

I trace a rough map of the area with my toe. I spent some time memorising the one in my pack, and I poke at an area not far from us, also to the south.

“I can feel a rift nearby,” I say. “If we follow the edge of the mountain here, I think we should come upon it. Rams and demons ought to keep us occupied, do you think?”

He is looking off where I’ve indicated. “You seem to be sensing the rifts more keenly now.”

“Something like that,” I tell him, suddenly uncomfortable. “It’s a bit like an itch at the edge of my awareness. The closer I get, the more specific the feeling.”

“Excellent,” he says. “You listen well to the magic around you.”

I glance at him, surprised by the sudden compliment, and he meets my eyes with an encouraging smile. I want to ask him what he means, but Cassandra is moving in our direction, calling out a question for Solas, and I give him another shy smile when he gets up to leave.

I tap my toes in a patch of grass. I don’t have to put on my boots quite yet.

 

The day goes somewhat as expected. We find enough rams to load up the scouts who follow us, though I’m not sure they quite know what to do with the one I froze solid. At least it should keep well enough. At least I didn’t immolate it to a charcoal crisp.

On the way south, we find a cave containing one of the apostate caches Recruit Whittle in the Crossroads mentioned. Sure enough, it’s got food and blankets, and not three paces away, a dead dwarf.

“Not all dwarves like caves, you know,” Varric mutters, but he rummages through the corpse’s pockets, retrieving a note about a vein of pure something farther to the south. Lyrium, maybe.

Another thing for us to investigate. The peace of the morning dissipates the farther south we go. The path leads us in a steep gully between a large hill to our right and a cliff face to our left, and while I don’t feel claustrophobic in caves, being hemmed in like this makes me jittery. I don’t feel any better when we find a human corpse just before the gully opens up. A blonde woman, dead at least a day by the look of her. The blood has mostly soaked into the dirt.

She’s not carrying much aside from a crumpled letter from her apparent lover. A very optimistic lover, who assumed a lone human being in the middle of the war would be able to make her way through the Hinterlands alone and unarmed.

“Waste of life,” I say under my breath.

“Let’s keep moving,” says Cassandra. “If we come across this Lord Berand, we can bring him the news. I am sure he would appreciate knowing.”

We don’t come across any lords of any name, however. My hand reminds me the farther south we go that there are rifts around us.

The first rift, the one I told Solas about, is a bit of a problem. Spawned beneath an enormous outcropping of rock, it spits out demons high above us, and I can’t get a clear shot at the wraiths that hurl green energy at me. When they hit without Solas’s barrier around me, my mana curls up within me, slower to respond. Worse is the terrors. If I thought they were frightening at the rift near the Breach, they are more dangerous here. They have learned some kind of Fade-step that allows them to dive into the earth at their feet and emerge twenty paces away beneath their target.

One explodes out of the ground, sending Solas sprawling, and I whirl mid-cast to divert the ice I had been aiming, freezing the demon in place to give Solas time to get back on his feet. Cassandra falls upon the terror with a roar, and Varric gets a bolt right in its gaping maw before my spell wears off.

Solas uses that moment to freeze its comrade where it stands in a circle of pulsing green, ready to dive through the ground itself, and my fireball finishes it off.

The rift closes easily enough, but it leaves me breathless.

“I hope we don’t come across too many with this particular arrangement,” I mutter, shaking my left hand a bit to lessen the cramping that follows.

“What, you don’t like demons twenty feet above your head, ready to pounce?” Varric is yanking a bolt out of the dead terror’s face, hardly noticing the goo.

“I prefer to be the one doing the pouncing,” I say without thinking about how else that could be interpreted, and Varric throws back his head and laughs.

“Don’t we all, Pouncer. Don’t we all.”

Oh, no.

Somehow I know that’s going to stick.

Cassandra looks like she isn’t sure what to make of either of us.

Solas is pretending not to listen. I can tell he’s pretending, because his cheek is twitching like he’s trying to hide a smirk.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lavellan needed a nickname. It just so happened that one of my cats was pouncing around, and I thought about this rift (which always annoys the hell out of me because of where the demons spawn), and it was all over.


	13. Fear in the Air

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Frightened folk doing frightened folk things.

We return to Haven a few days later upon receiving word that our travel to Val Royeaux has been arranged.

The atmosphere in Haven has shifted. Two days ago, we found the newly-bereaved Lord Berand in the cult stronghold in Dwarfson’s Pass, and I closed the rift lurking in a cave at the back of the small castle. When Lord Berand despaired, I acted on impulse and told him to join the Inquisition. A grieving man, and I brought him into our flock because of his faith when I don’t even share it. On top of that, sealing the rift there made the cult’s leader swear fealty to me on the spot, in spite of my protests. And so help me, but I gave her a task as well, to seek out secrets for us.

They are people, and I am using them. And they won’t be the last, because I feel the Breach above me with every breath. It must be sealed, and I can’t do it alone.

There is a crowd in front of the Chantry. I am happy to procrastinate going their way. I need to tell Leliana about the cult’s new purpose anyway, but I stop short just shy of her tent. She is kneeling, praying, and her voice is anything but peaceful. She sounds…furious.

“Is this what you want from us? Blood? To die, so that your will is done? Is death your only blessing?”

I’m about to back away when she turns and looks at me, freezing me where I stand more effectively than my own ice spells.

“You speak for Andraste, no? What does the Maker’s prophet have to say about all of this? What’s his game?”

“I speak only for myself, and I have no answers for you,” I tell her quietly, after a beat where even my heart seems to stop.

“You probably don’t even worship the Maker,” she says. Her voice turns curt. “Lucky. He asks a lot.”

The last words are almost bitten off, but beneath her anger, I can feel the raw pain emanating from her. She is dressed in purple like a bruise, and she feels like one, pulsing with a wound that will heal no time soon.

“The Chantry teaches that the Maker abandoned us. He demands repentance for our sins. He demands it all. Our lives. Our deaths. Justinia gave him everything she had, and he let her die.” Leliana stands, restless.

“I am sorry,” I tell her, and I mean it. “Her death has clearly hit you hard.”

“Not just me,” she says. Her voice changes, not breaking, almost pleading. “All of us. She led the faithful. She was their heart. If the Maker does not intervene to save the best of his servants, what good is he? I used to believe I was chosen, just as some say you are. I thought I was fulfilling his purpose for me. Working with the Divine. Helping people.”

Her voice takes on an ironic cast. She glances up at the top of the tent, then meets my eyes.

“But now she’s dead. It was all for nothing. Serving the Maker meant nothing.”

Something in my heart breaks for this woman. I don’t know if the rumors are true and she is Neria Mahariel’s lover, but there is something about her I can’t bring myself to turn away from.

“Perhaps you have another purpose. I could help you find it,” I hear my own voice say.

Leliana seems to snap back to herself, blinking at me. “No, this is my burden,” she says crisply. “I regret that I even let you see me this way. It was a moment of weakness. It won’t happen again. Come. To work, then.”

The crowd that has gathered outside the Chantry has gotten no smaller, and the voices are getting louder. I hurry away with a backward glance at Leliana. She has already busied herself with a pile of reports.

Outside the Chantry, a templar and a mage are shouting at each other over whose fault it is that the Divine is dead. Cullen stands between them, physically shoving the templar backward. And Chancellor Roderick is back. As soon as I’m seen, I can’t move away. It only takes a few minutes to help Cullen send everyone away to cool their heads in a snowbank—or whatever their preferred method of calming down—but by the time I leave them with a determined promise to bring back good news from Val Royeaux, a headache is budding at my temples.

It worsens when I go to meet Josephine, as she’d asked me to. She’s busy attempting to placate an Orlesian noble who claims to own Haven.

I finally escape the Chantry with a bundle of herbs sent from my clan—I trusted Leliana to inform them of my survival, and she did so quickly and with respect—so when I’m done presenting them to Master Adan, the sight of Solas emerging from his small house and the sound of his soft, “Hello” are tied for being the most welcome additions to my afternoon.

“Hello,” I say to him. “Did you hear any of that?”

I gesture in the direction of the Chantry.

“I made a point of avoiding it,” he says primly.

“I wish I’d done the same.” I pause for a moment, unsure of what to say. We leave for Val Royeaux in the morning, and that will mean weeks of travel with him, along with Cassandra and Varric and our Inquisition entourage, of course. “I’d like to know more about you, Solas.”

He looks at me sideways, wariness in the set of his shoulders. “Why?”

His inflection swoops upward on that one syllable.

 _I respect you_.

It’s what I want to say, but I don’t quite dare say it in as many words.

“You are an apostate, yet you risked your freedom to help the Inquisition,” I say instead.

“Not the wisest course of action, when framed that way.”

“I appreciate the work you’re doing, Solas,” I tell him earnestly. “I just wanted to know more about you.”

Again he looks up at me, then his gaze drops to his feet. “I am sorry. With so much fear in the air…what would you know of me?”

Something in me quiets. I move to stand beside him, leaning against the stone wall and looking out over the frozen lake in the distance beyond Haven’s defences.

“Have you always traveled and studied alone?” I ask. In truth, I envy him a bit. I have always only been the kind of alone that comes from being surrounded by people who want nothing to do with you.

“Not at all,” he says. “I have built many lasting friendships. Spirits of wisdom, possessed of ancient knowledge, happy to share what they had seen. Spirits of purpose helped me search. Even wisps, curious and playful, would point out treasures I might have missed.”

My heart gives a small leap at his words, and a counterbalancing pang. To think such a thing possible, and I never knew. Keeper Deshanna sometimes summoned spirits, but she never told me it was possible to simply meet them where they dwell.

“I’m impressed that you could become friends with spirits,” I tell him, unable to disguise the yearning in my voice, at least to my own ears.

“Anyone who can dream has the potential. Few ever try. My friends comforted me in my grief and shared my joy. Yet because they exist without form as we understand it, the Chantry declares that spirits are not truly people.” His sadness feels like Leliana’s, though I will not mention it. There is anger there interwoven with it. “Is Cassandra defined by her cheekbones and not her faith? Varric by his chest hair and not his wit?”

“I hadn’t thought about it that way,” I say quietly. “But I see your point.”

All my life I have been so lonely. The ache that sits in my chest deepens standing here, and the wind is cold upon my face. The ache is there, but its corner has opened like the petals of a flower to the sun with something hopeful. My own dreams suddenly seem brighter. Perhaps someday I could find such spirits, learn from them the way he has.

Warmth suddenly blooms at my shoulder. Solas has leaned forward on the wall as well, and he is looking at me, his eyes searching my face. Though we are not touching physically, I feel his mana at the edges of mine and the warmth he gives off in the sun.

His eyes search mine. “I…thank you. Few are willing to entertain such a notion.”

There are so many other things I want to ask him in this moment, but instead I smile, feeling the presence of his body heat next to me. The sun is sinking toward the mountaintops, casting the ice of the lake in gold against the blue-white of the backing snow.

He doesn’t move away, and neither do I, and our conversation turns to our coming journey, but some of the fear has faded from the air.

I am grateful that he is here.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This talk with Solas (and with Leliana, too) is another one of those conversations that always makes me have butterflies when I play it through, and I realised they sort of went well together.


	14. Indomitable

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For whatever reason, Solas keeps finding moments to join Ilaana.

I have never been to Orlais. We are to be a week on horseback to get to Val Royeaux, and while I want to be excited, instead I just feel like there is no way this can go well. My waking mind is full of the image of me facing off with a full battalion of Chancellor Rodericks (in my imagination it is a sea of his face repeated over and over, calling for my head). Cassandra spends much of our time on the road educating me about Orlesian politics, and as much as I wish it were boring, I force myself to absorb everything I can.

I need to learn about these people if I intend to be who I must. I need to learn as much as possible.

I’m not used to riding horses, and within two days, my hips and legs are sore, and I am half-convinced that I’ll never get my feet closer than a pace apart ever again. Well. Not really. By the second evening when we make camp somewhere in the Dales near Halamshiral, my brain is aching almost as much as my legs, from my own anxiety and the attempt to memorise even a portion of the endless hierarchies of this Empire of Lions.

A few of the scouts prepare our meal, and I wander a short distance from everyone else with my staff, stripped out of my armour to more pliable clothing, some soft lambswool leggings and a samite tunic. There’s still a chill to the air even though we’re not far from the mountains, but I’m not cold.

I find a clear patch of ground, the grass under my feet starting to prepare itself for winter. I think of the Hinterlands, where the harvests will likely rot in the fields with all the unrest.

That’s not helping.

The crisp autumn air fills my lungs, sweet and cold. There is a hush about this place. I never thought I would have a chance to visit the Dales, where my people once lived before the Chantry marched against them and slaughtered them en masse, condemning them to the city alienages if they surrendered. My people, the Dalish, are those who refused to submit. We may have remained free of their alienages, but I do not think we have been free. I do not think we have ever been free.

That’s also not helping.

I make a small frustrated noise at myself. I came over here to try and put the anxiety out of my head, not make it worse.

Planting my bare feet more firmly on the earth, I breathe out. When I breathe in again, I open myself to my mana. I’m not intending to use it to cast any spells, but I like to move with it when I do these exercises. They are as much for my mind as they are for my body.

I move with my breath, feet kissing the grass and my arms turning my staff in practiced movements. When my staff spins, the breeze on my face becomes my breath as I take it into me. My staff is attuned to ice, to the cold, and my mana responds to it. My skin responds to it, rising in ripples of gooseflesh that prickle the light, barely-there hairs on my arms.

For a time, I lose myself in the movements. I could do them with my eyes closed, and for a time, I do just that. My staff dips into the trails of magic my mana leaves in the air, sometimes diverting them, sometimes collecting them like yarn on a spindle.

Keeper Deshanna has an affinity with lightning. For years she has tried to get me to find my own, but in truth it never felt like a single path called to me. Fire and ice and lightning—they all come when I beckon, and as my body and mana ripple through movements, the air tingles with an electric charge even as my flesh still feels the chill of ice. Somewhere in me there is a kindled fire, heady and hot.

And there is the mark.

Somehow, it has so quickly become a part of me that I hardly noticed its influence, but it is there. It twists through and around the rest of my magic, bolstering me even as it seeks to make and mend tears in the veil itself.

In that moment, I feel more myself than I have ever been.

I open my eyes, smiling to myself. Peace has found me.

And so, it seems, has Solas.

“Forgive me, lethallin,” he says, leaning against a tree. How long has he been there? “I wanted to ask if you would mind me joining you, but I did not have the heart to interrupt.”

At a loss for words, I blink and gesture to the space beside me, moving over half a step in answer.

He hesitates for a breath or two, then shrugs the satchel he’s carrying off his shoulder. He nods and joins me on quiet bare feet.

Keeper Deshanna was the only person I ever worked through such exercises with, and it’s been a long time even since that. I have no set patterns, only pieces I have put together myself throughout my training, but he has a quick eye and falls in with me so effortlessly that the synergy I’ve felt when we fight together clicks into place, making more sense than it did before.

I leave my eyes open now, partly because with my luck, I’d manage to bonk him in the head with my staff. Also because watching him out of the corner of my eye is nice. He moves gracefully, without embellishment or showiness. I hope my own movements are half as elegant as his. There is something between us. I’m terrified I’m imagining it, but in spite of trying to keep it confined to the edges of my awareness, it keeps sneaking closer.

Still, moving with him this way feels right. Comfortable and comforting, at once like taking a fresh breath after holding another, but also like a gasp of surprise and pleasure.

The tips of my ears warm at that word.

Being this close to another mage, I can feel his mana at the edges of my own. His is cool and patient like a glacier. He is far from uniform; his mana feels crystalline, like every time the light changes it refracts back different colours from different facets. He has the confidence to be a thousand things at once. I wonder what mine feels like to him.

When we stop, my breath is quick and light like my pulse, and the cool air has turned warm around us. At my back, I can hear the scouts laughing at something Varric is telling them, a clank of a pot on its iron tripod over the fire. Solas leans his staff against the tree where he left his satchel, crouching to remove a water skin from the bag.

He offers it to me first, and I take it gratefully. The water is ice cold on my lips—with delight, I feel the tiny ice glyph he’s placed on it through the water skin, brushing up against my mana.

I hand it back, wiping a small droplet from the corner of my mouth.

“What made you start studying the Fade?” I ask him curiously.

Solas pauses with the water skin to his lips, takes a drink, and then re-stoppers it and places it back in his satchel. Careful hands, he has. My memory flashes on the way he helped me to my feet in Master Taigen’s house that day just a bare week or so ago.

“I grew up in a village to the north,” he says. “There was little to interest a young man, especially one gifted with magic. But as I slept, spirits of the Fade showed me glimpses of wonders I had never imagined. I treasured my dreams. Being awake, out of the Fade, became troublesome.”

He pronounces the words _I treasured my dreams_ with the kind of care someone would use if handling a precious piece of fragile glass. My breath hitches, audibly.

Flustered, I try to cover it with the first thing that passes through my mind. “Did spirits try to tempt you?”

_Well done, Lavellan, you absolute nug. Are you a mage or not? You know spirits._

He smiles with a slight shake of his head. I’m not sure if he noticed my reaction or not.

“No more than a brightly-coloured fruit is deliberately tempting you to eat it. I learned how to defend myself from more aggressive spirits and how to interact safely with the rest.” Solas’s grey-blue eyes go distant for a moment. “I learned to control my dreams with full consciousness. There was so much I wanted to explore.”

He _learned_ to do that? I’ve heard stories of Dreamers, but they have always been told to me as if it were some kind of innate talent. I didn’t know it was possible to learn.

My shyness doesn’t allow me to follow that trail. Could he truly be a Dreamer? The thought of my dreams becoming my own refuge of study, my own place of contemplation—I want so much to ask him.

“I gather you didn’t spend your entire life dreaming,” I say instead. I lean slightly on my staff, watching his face.

He has a small scar on his forehead and a cleft in his chin—or is that another scar? I can’t tell. Solas meets my eyes, and again the tips of my ears grow warmer.

“No,” he says with a self-deprecating chuckle. “Eventually I was unable to find new areas in the Fade.”

“Why?”

“Two reasons. First, the Fade reflects the world around it. Unless I traveled, I would never find anything new. Second, the Fade reflects and is limited by our imaginations. To find interesting areas, one must be interesting.”

This he says with a quirk of his lip. I smile back at him, unable to help myself.

“Is this why you joined the Inquisition?”

Oh, Creators, am I teasing him? I hope he doesn’t think I’m teasing him.

If he does, he gives no sign of it. Solas runs one finger over the edge of bark on the tree next to him, brushing a crumble from the pad of his thumb.

“I joined the Inquisition because we were all in terrible danger,” he says. “If our enemies destroyed the world, I would have nowhere to lay my head while dreaming of the Fade.”

“I wish you luck,” I tell him.

Selfishly, I wish the same for myself. He has opened a world in front of me that others have only discussed in terms of its dangers, never its wonders. Meeting someone who greets the world with the kind of pure marvel for what it holds—not out of naïveté of any risks, but a desire to learn—is something I never expected to find when I left my clan.

“Thank you,” Solas says, glancing at me. “In truth, I have enjoyed experiencing more of life to find more of the Fade.”

“How so?” I don’t want this conversation to end.

Solas’s eyes hold mine a moment longer, and his face is almost too neutral.

He motions to my staff where I am leaning against it. “You train your will to control magic and withstand possession. Your indomitable focus is an enjoyable side benefit.”

My eyesight goes ever-so-slightly pink. My what?

_I did not have the heart to interrupt._

I wonder again how long he was watching me.

Before I can react, Solas continues. “You have chosen a path whose steps you do not dislike because it leads to a destination you enjoy. As have I.”

I manage to open my mouth, and somehow, make it create words. “Indomitable focus?”

“Presumably,” he says. “I have yet to see it dominated. I imagine that the sight would be…fascinating.”

That feeling is back in the air between us, and this time I am mostly certain I’m not imagining it. His mana brushes against mine, and where they overlap I feel like I couldn’t sketch the borders with my fingertip, because in this moment, his magic and my magic feel interwoven, effortlessly interwoven.

I finally manage to process what he’s just said. Did he really just say that?

My vocal chords make a sound that resembles a “Hmm” before Varric suddenly calls out from the gaggle of scouts at the fire, “Hey, Chuckles! Pouncer! Either of you work up an appetite yet?”

When Solas gives me a small smile and retrieves his satchel and staff, feet taking him in the direction of the campfire and dinner, I only consider opening a rift and pushing Varric into it for a second or two.

Just for a second.

Work up an appetite, dwarf?

I walk back on unsteady legs. My brain keeps repeating the hitching pause at the end of Solas’s sentence. _I imagine that the sight would be…fascinating._ It’s been a long time since anyone has made me feel anything, let alone anything like this. I’m not sure anyone has ever made me feel anything like this.

I swallow. In spite of the drink of water, my mouth is utterly dry.

Work up an appetite.

What a choice of words.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My eyes nearly crossed when he said this line to me the first time in-game, and I have been imagining this story with some of the travel times and logistical aspects in the back of my mind, so I thought this conversation would work well on the road somewhere.
> 
> But before the appearance of Sera and Viv. For probably obvious reasons--Sera'd never give these two a moment's peace doing something so elfy. >.>


	15. Cat Fight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The lions of Orlais are not playing nice today.

Val Royeaux nearly takes my breath away

The city sprawls on the banks of the Waking Sea, cradled by hills around it, and canals and bridges far grander than anything I’ve ever seen connect the harbour to different parts of it. We enter the city a few days later across a long bridge lined with vibrant green plants at its edges and curves of mosaics that sparkle with gold under our our feet. The city ahead of us does the same, the sun striking shining spires and turrets, pale green rooftops and gentle blue walls. As we grow closer to the arch leading into the city, we enter a corridor of Andrastian statues, and a scout quickly approaches us, kneeling.

“My Lady Herald,” she says.

I’m a bit dazzled by the view and disconcerted by someone literally kneeling at my feet, so when Cassandra greets the scout with, “You’re one of Leliana’s people,” I tune out, trying to orient myself in this place.

Solas and Varric are both looking around with interest as well. My distraction is part trepidation; I should be listening.

“…so do a great many templars,” says the scout.

That gets my full attention.

“There are templars here?” Cassandra takes the words right out of my mouth.

The scout nods. She’s pretty, with dark brown eyes and full lips against smooth pale skin. “They seem to think the templars will protect them from—from the Inquisition.”

I can almost hear Varric think _Well, shit._ He gives a sharp shake to his head, his chin jutting out for just a moment. He was in Kirkwall when the war began; he doesn’t seem to be a fan of templars. If Solas is ruffled by this information, he gives no sign.

“They’re gathering on the other side of the market. I think that’s where the templars intend to meet you.” The scout climbs to her feet, ducking her head at me and Cassandra.

“Only one thing to do, then,” Cassandra says grimly.

As we make our way forward between the statues that flank us. They depict something Andrastian, and from the looks of it, something that gave their subject a supreme headache, which feels fitting. Cassandra is clearly upset.

“They wish to protect the people? From _us_?” I’m noticing that she tends to almost flutter her arms when she’s upset, like by flicking her fingers she can rid herself of insects crawling on her.

“You think the order’s returned to the fold, maybe?” Varric says from behind me. “To deal with us upstarts?”

“I know Lord Seeker Lucius. I can’t imagine him coming to the Chantry’s defence, not after all that has occurred.” Cassandra rubs one hand over her face, then looks to the scout. “Return to Haven. Someone will need to inform them if we are…delayed.”

“As you say, my lady,” the scout says, nodding again to the Seeker.

I hurry forward, wishing there was time to enjoy the swirls of mosaic tiles and the city itself rather than dreading the buzz of tense voices I hear ahead.

The path opens into a broad circle with a strange little building at the centre, ringed in the gold lions of Orlais and a curved circular canal of trickling water topped with lily pads. There appear to be businesses here, but no one seems to be doing much business just now. The shopkeepers—I’ve forgotten that the Orlesians all wear masks, and the sight surprises me—all linger in their shop doors, looking out at the gathered crowd across the plaza.

We pass a gibbet erected on the north side of the plaza, which makes my mood take a turn for the grim myself. Solas is quietly taking in everything, his keen eyes wary without being nervous-looking. He meets my gaze once, and I hold it for only half a breath before I have to look away because a voice catches my ear.

“Stand wary, guardsmen. The Inquisition—”

I don’t hear the rest of what the stranger says, because the gathered crowd drowns him out.

“Good people of Val Royeaux! Hear me!” A Chantry mother stands atop a dais, overlooking the crowd with a pious expression of her face that looks long-suffering and almost conspiratorial, as if she and the people have some connection only they will truly understand. “Together we mourn our Divine. Her naïve and beautiful heart, silenced by treachery.”

Oh…the Dread Wolf take this woman. There are plenty of things she could say after such a sentence that don’t have anything to do with me, but her eyes light on me in a way that tells me all too clearly that none of them will be what comes out of her mouth.

I set my jaw. I didn’t ask for any of this, but if the Chantry is determined to continue sowing discord instead of fixing the literal hole in the sky, I’ll give them a Herald of their bloody Andraste.

An anxious-looking templar with a kind face and warm brown skin hovers behind the Chantry woman, his green eyes darting back and forth between her and me as if he knows what’s coming and can’t stop it.

“You wonder what will become of her murderer,” the woman goes on. “Well, wonder no more.”

I hate when I’m right about bad things.

The buzz of the crowd grows in volume, and eyes find me from all around me. I have no idea what to do here, so I simply stare up at this Chantry mother trying to channel Keeper Deshanna’s best _are you done?_ face, the one she employed on our hunters when they were being particularly bullheaded.

“Behold the so-called Herald of Andraste, claiming to rise where our beloved fell.”

The woman’s eyes meet mine with what I can only call hatred. For the barest instant, I see Anduon’s face in her place and I’m back in that temple, daring to entertain that perhaps we don’t know everything, whatever our faith.

I didn’t have the courage to stand up to Anduon alone in that temple, but standing here in this grand city, surrounded by the fear and uncertain murmurs of a crowd of Orlesian shemlen strangers, I don’t care. The Breach is real, and this woman is more concerned with what people are calling me—I cannot fathom it.

“We say this is a false prophet!” she calls out. “The Maker would send no _elf_ in our time of need!”

There it is. That’s the real issue, and I feel it hum through the crowd. Not that I’m a mage, but that I’m an elf. Probably both, but this tells me which she finds more repulsive. As far as I know from hearing sisters spout the Chant all over Haven, their Chant of Light says nothing about elves specifically being the Maker’s children. She resents that we even exist.

“We came here in peace, simply to talk! And _this_ is what you do?” My voice rings out, far stronger than I expect it to. Fury almost blinds me, and my mana crackles around my body, pouring away from me in icy waves. “I implore you: let us sit down together, to deal with the real threat!”

“It’s true!” Cassandra chimes in, anger wedging itself between her words. “The Inquisition seeks only to end this madness before it is too late!”

“It is already too late,” the Chantry woman says. Her face is lines of cool triumph, and the clanking footsteps of people approaching in full armour reaches my ears. “The templars have returned to the Chantry! They will face this Inquisition, and the people will be safe once more!”

An imperious man with sallow pale skin mounts the dais in heavy templar plate. The Chantry mother backs away, clearly ready to let him denounce us.

But before I can ready myself for that, a templar scout behind him strides to the woman, and his fist catches her full in the face. The Chantry mother cries out, crumpling to the dais, and in the crowd around me, people make distressed noises of alarm.

The kind-looking templar who has been at the back this whole time is fluttering like a frightened bird, clearly wanting to kneel to help the woman, but the imperious man leading the others claps him on the shoulder.

His voice booms out. “Still yourself! She is beneath us.”

Cassandra takes a step forward, her head half-tilted in disbelief and fury, but she stops herself at my shoulder. We exchange a glance that feels as tight as a harp string about to snap.

“What’s the meaning of this?” I say to him, and the voices around me fall silent.

“Her claim to authority is an insult. Much like your own.” This man must be Lord Seeker Lucius. I detest him already.

He turns and exits the dais on the opposite side from where he mounted it, moving away. Cassandra springs into action.

“Lord Seeker Lucius,” she says firmly, confirming my identification of the man. “It is imperative that we speak with—”

“You will not address me.”

He doesn’t even look at her. His iron-grey hair is slicked back from his face with oil, shining in the sunlight. His skin looks thin somehow, lightly wrinkled with age over some strange redness that seeks the surface and fails. He looks like someone who has been given over to too much wine for too long, but I don’t think wineis the problem with this man.

The crowd of templars follows him, their backs straight and full of prideful disdain.

“Lord Seeker?” Cassandra stops, scandalised.

“Creating a heretical movement. Raising up a puppet as Andraste’s prophet. You should be ashamed.” Lord Seeker Lucius stops, irritated as if Cassandra is a fly buzzing about his face when he is trying to enjoy a meal. He turns to address the crowd of Orlesians behind us. “You should all be ashamed! The templars failed no one when we left the Chantry to purge the mages! You are the ones who have failed. You, who would leash our righteous swords with doubt and fear! If you came to appeal to the Chantry, you are too late. The only destiny here that demands respect is mine.”

For a moment I imagine freezing this man solid and letting Varric smash Bianca through his face. Not with a bolt. Just that lunking mass of a crossbow to the skull.

Instead, I use my words. “What we truly need is an alliance that will seal the Breach!”

He turns that cold blue-eyed gaze on me. “Oh, the Breach is indeed a threat. But you certainly have no power to do anything about it.”

The mark twitches at my palm as if it hates this arrogant fool as much as I do.

To my surprise, the conflicted templar from the dais hurries to his side. “But Lord Seeker, what if she really was sent by the Maker? What if—”

The Lord Seeker doesn’t deign to answer, but the templar scout who punched the revered mother does. “You are called to a higher purpose. Do not question.”

Lucius goes on as if no one has interrupted him. “I will make the templar order a power that stands alone against the void. We deserve recognition! Independence!” He looks at me, scorn dripping from his twisted lips. “You have shown me nothing. And the Inquisition, less than nothing. Templars! Val Royeaux is unworthy of our protection. We march!”

He turns on his heel and walks away, the other templars following. The kind-faced templar shoots one anguished glance over his shoulder at me, and my mask crumbles for an instant under that green-eyed stare. I am helpless to help this man if he is determined to follow such person as Lord Seeker Lucius. I will him to stop, break away from the group, but after a moment, he turns away, a slump to his shoulders as he follows his fellows out of the plaza.

Behind me, there is a wail from someone in the crowd. Someone closer to me raises a panicked, “They are deserting us! What will we do?”

Varric turns from where he’s standing a few paces away and returns to us. “Charming fellow, isn’t he?”

Cassandra is staring after the departing templars as if they’ve all sprouted demons from the backs of their heads. “Has Lord Seeker Lucius gone mad?”

“Do you know him very well?” I ask her. If he’s always been like this, I would have certainly avoided spending any more time within a league’s radius of him than I had to.

“He took over the Seekers of Truth two years ago, after Lord Seeker Lambert’s death,” she says. “He was always a decent man, never given to ambition and grandstanding. This is very bizarre.”

“It doesn’t look like we’ll be getting the templars to help us after all,” I say.

Part of me is relieved. I may not have been forced into a Circle, but I trust templars about as far as I can throw a live high dragon.

But Cassandra seems to disagree, which feels predictable. “I wouldn’t write them off so quickly. There must be those within the Order who see what he’s become. Either way, we should first return to Haven and inform the others.”

Solas has been quiet through all this, but the sardonic look he gives me after Cassandra’s pronouncement tells me I’m not alone in finding them less than ideal prospects as allies.

I hear a quiet “Excuse me” as I turn to walk away, and turn to see a woman in a half mask and a ruffled collar that almost covers the bottom half of her face too. She wets her lips nervously, and the strip of brown skin visible between mask and ruffles is almost quivering with anxiety.

“Excuse me,” she says again. “But is what they’re saying real? The Inquisition is going to fix the hole in the sky?”

Whatever I expected, it wasn’t that. She’s clearly the owner of a fruit stand, as she is in the shadows amid crates of apples and other produce.

“We’re going to try, anyway,” I tell her with what I hope is a reassuring smile.

“No one is doing anything!” She sounds half-panicked and frustrated, but here she is talking to me anyway. “The Chantry is useless, and the templars—Andraste! I never thought they’d _abandon_ us!”

Before I can say anything else, she goes on.

“Listen. Your camp will need food. I have contacts. We’ll have deliveries there in days!” She peers at me through the eye holes of her mask with something like hope.

“You want to help the Inquisition?” Cassandra sounds so disbelieving, and I can’t really blame her.

I’m touched, though.

“Never been part of anything this big before,” the woman says, looking back and forth between Cassandra and me. “But if your Inquisition is going to seal the sky, I want to _help_.”

“Head to Haven, then,” I tell her automatically. I can’t turn her away. Belatedly, I glance at Cassandra, wondering if I should have consulted her first, but she has a small, approving smile on her face. I look back to the woman in front of me. “We need good people.”

The woman gives a small cough of a laugh. “I don’t know if I’m that, but it’ll be nice to see.”

Solas is watching me when I go to get some of the woman’s information, giving her some details of where to go to get her deliveries organised.

People are here, around us, wanting to help.

That more than anything else gives me the first bud of hope.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Up until now, Ilaana has been sort of passive in the whole Inquisition thing, but this scene to me, playing as an elf and hearing that Chantry mother say what she does--it always feels like a breaking point. Tl;dr, Ilaana is fed up with the Chantry's shit. It's also notable that she makes the first real decision here, to recruit Belle. I know you can appeal to Cassandra here, but Ilaana's turning point is that she makes a choice.
> 
> I know the romance is playing second fiddle a bit, and it won't forever, but for me who Lavellan *is* is as vital to her relationship with Solas as anything, so getting to write that person is really nice and fun for me. ^_^ I hope you like her too!


	16. Messages and Messengers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Messages come in all sorts of guises, and sometimes an unexpected moment with someone who is like you.

The city still feels restless once the crowd disperses, but I get the time I want to wander. I read plaques. I find a list of dead from the Orlesian civil war that is tearing apart the countryside. I sell some items we’ve gathered on the way here.

I can smell the Waking Sea. I forgot how much I love that smell.

I’m just about to suggest we go down to the docks to get closer when a sudden buzz flies by my face, and I instinctively jump out of the way. An arrow lands in a hedge two paces from me, with a ribbon trailing it. That must have been the source of the buzz.

“What’s this?” Cassandra’s voice is several pitches higher than usual—the sudden arrow clearly startled her too. “An arrow with a message?”

I pick it up gingerly and unfurl the message attached to the arrow’s shaft, glancing around even though I strongly suspect its owner is long gone.

The message is penned in an extravagant hand. And someone has…doodled on the edges of it?

I squint at the doodles for a moment before figuring they’re locations in the marketplace, then at the message itself.

_People say you’re special. I want to help, and I can bring everyone._

_There’s a baddie in Val Royeaux. I hear he wants to hurt you. Have a search for the red things in the market, the docks, and ‘round the cafe, and maybe you’ll meet him first. Bring swords._

_Friends of Red Jenny_

I pass the message to Cassandra.

“I was going to suggest we take a stroll to the docks anyway,” I say, indicating the poorly-drawn doodle of a boat that looks dangerously close to sinking due to an encounter with a…giant crab?

“This is ridiculous,” Cassandra says.

Varric takes one look at the message and snorts. “Whoever sent this is better with a bow than with a pen, that’s for sure. But I’ve heard of the Friends of Red Jenny—if they like you, it’s generally better for your health than if they don’t.”

“You are saying this is a threat?” The Seeker looks as if she’s had a few too many surprises for one day.

“I’m saying that if it were a threat, they wouldn’t send a message.” Varric looks at me with a flash of a grin. “Looks like you’ve caught their eye, Pouncer.”

I have no idea what that means.

“Right,” I say. “We’ll keep an eye out.”

Either way, I’m going to look at the water.

Solas walks with me on the way, though he doesn’t say anything until we are almost at the water.

“A lovely view, is it not?”

I almost stumble. He’s talking about the view?

“It’s beautiful,” I agree.

The clouds are not enough to cover the sky, and the sun has passed its zenith. Golden rays reach through and touch the hills beyond the docks, where the bulk of Val Royeaux’s dwellings rise up among the trees.

“It’s easy to forget there is a civil war happening,” I say after a moment. “And the hole in the sky. I’d like to think those in power should know better, but if this is all they see of the troubles, it’s no wonder they think we’re stirring it up rather than trying to end it.”

“Indeed,” Solas says. “People are traditionally poor judges of anything beyond the ends of their noses.”

“And often closer than that as well,” I say. I’m half-joking. Or perhaps not.

He nods. For a moment I allow myself to enjoy the view, the sound of waves lapping against the stone dock. There are harbour smells about, fish and the like, but it’s far cleaner than the one time I saw the docks in Kirkwall. I was very glad I was there only to take a ship. I don’t think I could have borne more than a few hours there without using my magic to incinerate the rubbish people carelessly tossed into the water. I still wonder where they expected it to go after they chucked it in the water—tides always come back in.

The rest of the afternoon is spent exploring Val Royeaux, and by the end of it, we’ve managed to find and piece together the clues left by these Friends of Red Jenny.

“It says someone is following us,” I say when I’m done puzzling over them. There’s a key attached to one, and a map of a courtyard not far from here.

 _Bring swords_ , it said.

“An alert to an ambush or an ambush itself?” Cassandra wonders aloud.

“I doubt the Friends of Red Jenny would plan an ambush,” Varric says. “Might ruin one, though, if they didn’t like the person doing the ambushing. Probably in an unexpected way. Like with feathers.”

Feathers? I’m not sure how to ruin an ambush with feathers, but it’s definitely…different.

Or like making us run around putting together clues, I suppose.

We make our way back toward where we arrived, and Cassandra nudges me.

“I believe that messenger is trying to get your attention,” she says.

The person in question appears to be a Circle mage, enrobed and very formal.

“You are the Herald of Andraste, are you not?” The messenger gives me a polite nod. “I have an invitation for you.”

I take the proffered invitation, which is on rich creamy paper and in a hand as different from the one that penned the first message of the day as a high dragon is from a baby nug.

The messenger bows and leaves.

_You are cordially invited to attend the salon held at the chateau of Duke Bastien de Ghislain._

_Yours,_

_Vivienne de Fer_

_First Enchanter of Montsimmard_

_Enchanter to the Imperial Court_

“Getting popular, Pouncer,” Varric says to me with a wink.

“Madame de Fer is a formidable woman,” agrees Cassandra. “If she wants to meet you, it would likely benefit the Inquisition to do so.”

Before I can say anything in response, there is a voice from behind me.

“If I might have a moment of your time?”

I turn to see an elven woman in mage robes approaching from the central rotunda. She has short black hair and carries herself with grace. Pouncer the Popular, indeed.

“Grand Enchanter Fiona?” Cassandra cannot disguise the shock in her voice.

“Leader of the mage rebellion,” Solas says, sounding pleased. “Is it not dangerous for you to be here?”

She looks to him with a slight nod of acknowledgement, though she doesn’t seem to recognise him.

“I heard of this gathering, and I wanted to see the fabled Herald of Andraste with my own eyes.” Grand Enchanter Fiona looks at me, and I think I see a hint of approval in her pale green eyes. “If it’s help with the Breach you seek, perhaps you should look among your fellow mages.”

“The mages weren’t willing to talk to the Inquisition before,” I say carefully. “Why now?”

“Because now I’ve seen what you are. And I’ve seen the Chantry for what it is.” Her voice holds a sour note at the end of the sentence, but then she looks directly into my eyes. “Consider this an invitation to Redcliffe: come meet with the mages. An alliance could help us both, after all. I hope to see you there. Au revoir, my Lady Herald.”

With that, she turns and leaves, moving back into the city.

When she is out of sight, Cassandra beckons. “Come. Let us return to Haven.”

 

We can’t, however, go back to Haven tonight.

We’re staying at an inn on the outskirts of Val Royeaux, and it’s a strangely exciting experience for me. I’ve never stayed at an inn before.

I don’t think our experience is typical, though. The Inquisition hired the entire top floor, and when I do venture down to the common room, word seems to have gotten around about who I am because the elven serving boy stutters and alternates between nervously avoiding eye contact and staring at my vallaslin. The light is warm and golden from the fireplace and the lamps, and I wish I could stay here and feel relaxed.

The patrons’ conversation sinks to a mere murmur, making the dulcimer player in the corner sound almost inappropriately loud.

“I’ll just take my drink up to my room,” I say, feeling defeated.

“Of—of course, Lady Herald,” the boy says. “I’ll fetch it for you at once.”

The room is too quiet while I wait aside from the furiously hammered notes of the dulcimer, and when the serving lad returns with my tankard of mulled wine, I thank him as warmly as I can.

I’m about to turn away, but he looks like he wants to say something, so I look at him.

“Yes?”

“I’m sorry, your worship,” he says. “It’s just—”

He drops his voice so low I can barely hear him.

“You’re an elf,” he says, his eyes wide and full of an emotion I can’t name. “You’re like me.”

The second sentence is so soft I’m not sure I’ve heard him correctly.

His hair is pale blond, and his eyes are as green as mine. He looks as if he might be sick any second now.

He goes on hurriedly. “I mean, of course you’re not like me, your worship. It’s just—elves are always servants, and I’ve never heard of an elf being—I mean. You’re so much more. You’re the Herald of Andraste, and you’re Dalish, and I’m not those things. I’m just—”

“I _am_ like you,” I tell him firmly. He stops so quickly I may well have grabbed him by the throat. “I am like you.”

Something I remember overhearing in Haven, an elven man’s voice full of desperate hope that they might put a verse about me in the Chant of Light. The Chantry sister he was speaking to sounded as if he’d suggested setting Andraste herself on fire a second time. She completely deflated the man. At the time I almost panicked at the very thought of being put anywhere near their Chant, but I hear that same hope in this lad here. He just wants to be seen as a person, by the people he serves, by his religion.

In this small thing I know I have power, and it doesn’t come from my mana. It comes from falling out of the damn Fade with this mark on my hand, and what everyone seems to think that means. I may as well use it.

“I am like you,” I tell him one last time. “Whoever you want to be, you can be. Whatever anyone else says or thinks, you are worthy of a place in this world. I see you. I’m glad you spoke to me.”

It occurs to me that his boss could be angry at him for daring to speak to me. I hope he doesn’t get in trouble. My power is only worth something to this lad in this moment. Once I’m gone I have no doubt the people around him will forget, if they ever cared.

But it might mean something to him.

The lad’s eyes are round and wide.

“Th-thank you, your worship,” he stammers.

“You are as worthy as anyone else,” I tell him softly, only for his ears. “Never forget that.”

 _The Maker would send no_ elf _in our hour of need_. I hear the Chantry woman’s voice again. There were elves in that crowd. They would hear those words from the Chantry itself. So would the humans around them.

Who are my people, I wonder. I’m not sure it matters, but this young lad, I think he is among them, whoever they are. He deserves better than any faith that would tell him he could not possibly be someone’s prophet or hero or whatever else they say I am, purely because of who he is.

I don’t have anything on me, not really. I fumble in my belt pouch and pull out a pair of trinkets I’ve found on the road. One’s a figure of a mabari, and I put that back. The other happens to be a wolf. I hand it to the lad.

He takes it with a shaking hand. The thing isn’t worth more than a few coins.

“Here,” I say. I realise I’m a Dalish elf handing a wolf trinket to an elven serving boy. He’ll know who the Dread Wolf is. I suddenly feel very foolish. But inspiration strikes a moment later. “I found this on the way here. It’s a small thing, but I hope it will remind you. Wolves are stronger because they know how to work as a pack. Find your pack.”

Everyone around is is listening. There are a few other elves in the room, mostly servants, and they watch me with curious eyes. The humans are outright staring. I see more than a few appalled faces. From even this brief time in Orlais, I know that Orlesians do not treat elven servants like I’m treating him.

But the Grand Game be damned. At least today.

“Be well,” I tell the lad.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see a familiar shape coming from the direction of a small library I caught a glimpse of on the way in, and my face colours. I’m afraid to look and see if that actually is Solas or not. If he saw this exchange, I would probably die of mortification on the spot. I will continue my life in blissful ignorance and pretend there’s no way that is him.

The serving boy is grasping that wolf so tightly against his chest I’m afraid it might break through his hand. He nods and flees, and I envy him that.

Instead I measure my footsteps as I retreat upstairs, thankful I got a whole tankard of wine.

I was going to share with Varric. Now I’m pretty sure he’ll have to get his own.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had a book launch this year and a fellow enby just happened upon my launch by complete chance, saw my pronoun badge, and decided to stay. They came up to me afterward to tell me how much it meant to them to see someone *like them* doing what they want to do (writing books) about people like us. I was so touched by that moment, because I've had them too, from the other side. Seeing someone like you doing something you feel is beyond yourself (for whatever reason) can be such a powerful thing.
> 
> Anyway, Ilaana gets that moment, to use her power in a way that is meaningful to someone else. <3


	17. Too Many Breaches

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Inquisition is growing, opposites watching the air mend for the first time.

Two days later, we are on our way back to Haven…and we’re not alone.

I glance surreptitiously behind me while Cassandra goes on about Chantry hierarchy next to me. Our party has grown, and a horse blows its breath out, leaving puffs of mist in the cool air as we make our way eastward. Two new additions to the Inquisition have joined us, and they could not be more different. In fact, I think if you were to ask an expert, the expert would tell you that one is the literal antithesis of the other.

Sera is small with an unfortunate haircut I can’t identify as accidental or on purpose. She is what was at the end of the Red Jenny messages, dressed in plaideweave ( _why_ ) and carrying a literal sack of breeches, which was the reason the fight with the noble she warned us about happened to take place against his multiple bare-arsed guards.

No one knows what to make of her, but she and Varric seem to be getting on, so my current plan is to let him keep doing that.

She’s also an elf, and apparently none-too-keen on that? Her first words after getting a good look at me were, “And…you’re an elf. Hope you’re not…too elfy.”

I don’t even know what that means. My impulse is to like her.

And then there’s Vivienne.

We’d barely stepped into her salon—whatever _that_ even means—when some Orlesian peacock came strutting toward us to try and goad me into a duel. Only to be frozen by Vivienne herself for his lack of manners, after which she offered to join the Inquisition.

In my brief conversation with her, I learnt that she’s a mage and First Enchanter of what she called “the last _loyal_ Circle in Thedas,” which made me feel like a fox encountering another fox who wants to wear it as a hat. I cannot fathom a mage who thinks we belong imprisoned with templars.

But Vivienne, of course, is not imprisoned at all, so it clearly doesn’t bother her. Since she’s the Imperial Court Enchanter and mistress of a duke, she has more freedoms than most humans. I think I’d be more surprised if someone like her actually admitted something was wrong with the way the world was set up.

I am not sure how I feel about either Vivienne or Sera, but they are coming back to Haven with us.

Hence, Cassandra and the Chantry.

“Before the Divine’s death,” Cassandra is saying, “Chancellor Roderick was responsible for—”

I think Leliana’s told me that before, and voices behind me draw my attention.

Vivienne is currently talking—down—to Solas within earshot.

“So, an apostate?” Vivienne says to him.

I cringe, but Cassandra doesn’t notice.

“That is correct, Enchanter. I did not train in your Circle,” Solas says in a tone that suggests he already knows what’s coming.

“Well, dear, I hope you can take care of yourself, should we encounter anything outside your experience.”

I was not expecting that. I almost choke on my own tongue. She’s just _met_ him!

But Solas seems supremely unbothered.

“I will try, in my own fumbling way, to learn from how you helped seal the rifts at Haven,” he says, then pauses. “Ah, wait. My memory misleads me. You were not there.”

I don’t dare look at him directly, but I pretend to be adjusting the saddlebag at my left hip. I feel his awareness of me. He knows I heard.

Of course, what she just said was in knowing earshot of me, and if I’m to understand from Leliana and Cassandra how the Grand Game works, I’d be foolish not to assume Vivienne’s words are as much for me—a Dalish apostate, to her eyes—as they are for Solas.

Cassandra finally notices me not paying attention. She gives me a half nod and knees her horse to move just a bit faster, and I follow her lead.

“It’s good that you recruited Enchanter Vivienne into the Inquisition,” she says in a low voice that should not carry. “She is ambitious but has always shown sense in her dealings with the Chantry. My advice would be to watch her, but heed her when she speaks. That one wastes no words.”

The Seeker meets my eyes.

“I think I am learning that already,” I say to her wryly.

“If you assume at least three meanings in everything that passes her lips, it will likely be a conservative estimate,” Cassandra replies. “I despise the Game, but Madame de Fer revels in it.”

“That is good to know.” The landscape is changing again.

I can no longer see the Waking Sea over the hills, and already I miss it.

“And watch the treasury carefully,” Cassandra goes on. “With that Sera present—”

“You think she’s here to rob us?” I ask, squinting at the Seeker.

“Probably not, but I wouldn’t put it past her.”

I think I’ll defer to Varric’s judgement on that count.

I’m almost thankful when the mark gives its tell-tale twitch that says a rift is near.

“Rift to the northeast,” I say. “It must have opened in the last few days.”

“Oh, for the—” Cassandra starts, and I can feel her vexation.

I don’t really blame her.

She starts calling out orders, and we dismount when we near the rift. It should be interesting, with six of us instead of four. I’m curious to see Vivienne and Sera in action.

“Varric!” I call out. “Want to tell our new companions what to expect?”

“Of course, Inquisitor!” He grins as if to say he’s calling me Pouncer in his heart.

The rift ahead isn’t particularly formidable, but one demon with a moment of luck is bad enough. Solas comes to my side as we venture closer, the scouts taking the reins of his horse and mine. Solas doesn’t say anything, but I’m glad of his presence. I give him a tight smile.

“Demons and demon-y shite,” I hear Sera say.

An amused sparkle appears in Solas’s eyes.

“Shall we?” I ask.

“Lead on,” Solas says magnanimously. “This should be interesting.”

I suppress my smile’s desire to widen. The rift is some ways off the road in a copse of birch trees that have exchanged their summer green for brilliant yellow and orange, which makes the veridium energy of the rift stand out clearly as soon as we get a bit closer. The mark tingles. I could try and disrupt the rift straightaway, but I’d rather see what Sera and Vivienne do.

The first new thing is the barrier that springs up around me. I know it immediately for Vivienne’s work and not Solas’s. His barriers feel smooth, rounded at the edges. They envelop, and when magic hits them, it glances off the sides, rerouted as smoothly as a water droplet falling on a glass bauble, as if whatever does the glancing meant to go the other way anyway. Vivienne’s is powerful, serviceable, but it feels ever-so-slightly top heavy. Like trying to slice an apple with a greatsword.

“Rubbishy demons,” Sera says. She’s got her bow out, an arrow nocked.

“Get ready!” I call out.

“Of course, dear,” Vivienne replies.

My mark twists, and the rift belches a trio of wraiths and two rage demons, which immediately come toward me.

I throw down an ice glyph in front of me. Some part of me thrills at this.

Solas freezes one of the rage demons before it can reach the glyph, and I hit it with chain lightning, which jumps to the other as well. Right as I do that, Vivienne flings more ice at the first, which explodes in a foul-smelling blast of demon chunks.

Sera and Varric are managing the wraiths, which are distracted by Cassandra’s war cry. Sera’s an impeccable shot, and she knows it.

“Eat it! Ate it!” she crows when one of the wraiths dies.

The second rage demon hits my glyph right in front of me, and I pull upon my mana—Winter’s Grasp will demolish this thing with it already frozen.

My spell hits it at the exact moment both Solas and Vivienne do the exact same thing, and our three icy fists slam into the rage demon from three directions.

One would have demolished it. Three? I almost feel sorry for the demon. Our spells _obliterate_ it. It sends a shower of frozen demon shrapnel exploding outward in all directions, and I Fade step a bit away to avoid wearing it. There’s little luck of a bath before we get back to Haven. Vivienne is not so quick—or perhaps she doesn’t know how to step through the Fade. She hastily gets a barrier up with a look of distaste.

Solas prudently did the same as me.

I think we’ve just redefined _overkill_.

“Next wave!” Varric calls out a warning.

The rift pulses, and this time the renewed barrier comes from Solas.

Cassandra readies a shield wall in front of the rippling ground to my left.

This time I do try and disrupt the rift as soon as the pack of shades spawns in front of us. There are six of them, and my back twitches with the memory of the claws digging into it at the Breach. It stuns the demons, and they slump forward, swaying in eerie unison.

The shades are clustered near Cassandra, and this time I use Immolate instead of ice. A pair of them panic when I set them ablaze, and Varric and Sera make good use of their frantic flailing as they attempt to move away with that strange swimming motion they use. In moments, the battle is over, and I feel Vivienne’s and Sera’s eyes on me when I reach for the rift and let it reach through my mark. I wish I had words for the sensation. There are frayed threads in the rift, and there are spools of thread in my mark—it feels like they seek each other, drawing together, healing, knitting, plying, interweaving until—

The rift explodes and vanishes, leaving the faint smell of crackling lightning and singed shade behind.

“Remarkable,” Vivienne says. “Well done, dear.”

Somehow she manages to sound condescending even when paying a compliment. I nod my thanks.

Sera is staring at me, blinking.

“It’s true then,” she says, slinging her bow over her shoulder. “You did the thing—with that shiny mark, and it’s gone. Poof.”

“Eloquent,” Vivienne murmurs.

Sera ignores her. She points at me. “That? Might be magic, but it’s useful, that. There a lot of these rift-y things? Never mind. One’s too many. Too many Breaches!”

So she isn’t a fan of “elfy” elves or mages, I suppose. She is, however, doubled over laughing at her own joke.

“Now that the mark’s stopped trying to kill me straightaway, I’m trying to put it to good use,” I say, clenching and flexing my left hand. The threads relax some of their tension, and the mark flares, then quiets.

Sera stops laughing and cocks her head at me. “Tried to kill you, did it? Lucky us it didn’t succeed.”

We make our way back to the Inquisition escort.

“Solas, darling,” Vivienne says suddenly when we leave the trees behind, “if you wish instruction in proper magical attacks, do let me know.”

I miss a step and almost trip. Oh, Creators, _really_?

“I will,” Solas says. “Perhaps you will direct me to a Circle mage who does not front load her barriers?”

Vivienne laughs delightedly in response. Solas falls back a little, just enough for me to catch up. Sera and Varric saunter on ahead.

“Assume that meant something,” Sera mutters as she passes me. “Too much magic.”

“Good shooting,” I say to her, and she gives me an impish grin before looking ahead.

“Was, yeah?” She elbows Varric in the shoulder. “Not bad from that lunking chunk either.”

“I’m going to assume you mean me and not Bianca,” Varric says. “She’ll have to be offended otherwise.”

Sera seems to think that is marvellously funny, and she laughs raucously. “Bianca? The crossbow? I like you.”

Vivienne, just a bit in front of us, doesn’t look back, but I see the minute stiffening in her shoulders. Solas and I exchange a glance. I like this…whatever it is. Understanding, perhaps. For a moment I imagine if he weren’t here, if it were just me and the rest of them. I may have started out just a tool to Solas and Cassandra and Varric, but I hope I’ve moved beyond that with them now. And none too soon, since Vivienne and Sera seem to think of me as one. Something useful, whether for garnering power in Orlais’s Grand Game or the kind of useful mage just this side of being the dangerous mage, because at least I’m good for closing rifts.

But Solas _is_ here. He doesn’t walk close to my side, but he isn’t far either. I’m grateful that at least to him, I think I’ve become a person.

It’s going to be a long road back to Haven.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I always *want* to like Viv, and I find it so difficult to get around the way her privilege gets in the way. She is not confined by the Circle, so she does not believe the Circle to be confining. I really wanted to put her right next to Sera, who is as against the status quo as Vivienne is for it, and this was a fun way to do it.
> 
> And Solas, of course, ever-present in Ilaana's orbit.


	18. Whispers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In Hushed Whispers, to the moment of the time rift.

Time magic.

 _Time_ magic.

No sooner do we arrive in Haven than we are bundled back off to the Hinterlands, this time in an attempt to get to Redcliffe. Corporal Vale needed a healer to come to the Crossroads, and I wanted to speak with Grand Enchanter Fiona about an alliance with the mages…but nothing can ever be simple, I think.

Instead, we found time-twisting rifts, a Tevinter magister in so far over his head that even his own son and former protege want to stop him, and a series of very, very bad news.

The Grand Enchanter insisted that she was never in Val Royeaux to meet us. That in itself is creepy enough to make my skin tingle, but worse is that she seems to have sold the rebel mages into servitude to Tevinter. A young elf called Lysas is distraught by that—everyone I speak to in Redcliffe is distraught. The more I wandered through the village, the more convinced I was that there is something very, very wrong.

I’ve never been convinced that blood magic is any more inherently evil than any other tool, but like any tool, it can be turned to nasty, nasty purposes, and I am afraid that this magister used it to get Fiona to agree to his plan.

The magister’s former protege is a Tevinter man with an impeccably trimmed moustache and a tendency for the dramatic—I can’t help but tentatively like the man, and I deeply respect his willingness to right something he sees as dangerously stupid. Dorian seems to want to help, and since none of the rest of us know anything about time magic—the mere thought of it makes my fingertips itch—I’m inclined to let him help.

Haven is on edge when we return to discuss it with the war council, and I’m unsurprised to hear Cullen strongly suggesting we forget the mages and attempt to meet with the templars instead.

I _am_ surprised, however, to hear Cassandra in favour of at least investigating Redcliffe.

“Redcliffe is in the hands of a magister. This cannot be allowed to stand,” she says.

“The letter from Alexius asked for the Herald of Andraste by name,” Josephine says, exasperation in every word. “It’s an obvious trap.”

The council descends into bickering. I half-listen, trying to figure out how this could possibly still work. Redcliffe’s formidable defences, half the advisors wary or outright opposed to intervening—this is a headache that could quickly turn from merely inconvenient to outright fatal.

“The magister—” Cassandra is saying, shaking her head. She sounds desperate.

“Has outplayed us,” Cullen interrupts.

“The magister’s son Felix told me Alexius is in a cult that’s obsessed with me,” I break in. “I doubt they’ll graciously receive our apologies and go about their business.”

“They will remain a threat, and a powerful one, unless we act,” Leliana agrees.

I am very thankful for her voice. The thought of turning the mages over to Tevinter one rung above slavery makes my stomach churn.

We discuss for a bit longer, with no progress. Josephine doesn’t think the arl can help. Cullen doesn’t think there’s a way inside.

But then Leliana speaks again. “Wait. There is a secret passage into the castle. An escape route for the family.” She thinks for a moment. “It’s too narrow for our troops, but we could send scouts through.”

Hope flutters in my chest.

I know I’ll have to be the bait. I know the advisors don’t like that—Cullen especially seems reluctant for some reason—but I have a feeling if we don’t do this, we will regret it. I will regret it more.

The door swings open, and Dorian saunters through with a pair of flustered-looking guards helplessly gesturing their apologies behind him.

“Fortunately,” Dorian says, “you’ll have help.”

 

I know that it could be a bad idea to face Alexius with only one warrior and three mages, but when we depart, I realise I can’t leave Solas behind. We have no idea what we’re walking into, and I need another mage with me, one I know I can trust.

It’s strange, that feeling, that certainty that I can trust him.

When we go, it’s him, Cassandra, myself, and Dorian. Dorian and Solas politely discuss magical technique the whole way to Redcliffe, and I listen, fascinated. I know some of the technical terms they bat back and forth, but most are foreign to me. My magic is so often intuition. I think sometimes I understand what they’re talking about—the words correspond to my experience—but I don’t dare join in.

Dorian leaves us some distance from the castle. Alexius and his people cannot see him coming—he goes with Leliana and the scouts, leaving me alone with Cassandra and Solas.

When we arrive in Redcliffe castle, though, we are greeted by an apologetic servant telling me that the invitation was for me alone.

“They’re negotiators,” I say flatly to the servant, indicating the others.

He flutters a little, but he leads me in to meet Alexius anyway.

The magister is sitting on the arl’s throne, flanked by guards in strange white hoods and spiked masks. Felix said these Venatori are a Tevinter cult, and from first glance, they look it. Not that I know what Tevinter guards—or Tevinter cults—usually look like, but Alexius barely seems to be hiding the fact that his intentions are malicious.

My body feels—electric. I can feel the veil here, and it feels like a threadbare shirt you can almost see through.

Alexius gets up from the throne when we are announced, striding down from the raised dais. Grand Enchanter Fiona stands demurely to the side. Demure is not a word I have ever heard applied to the woman, and seeing her like this makes my teeth ache. This is wrong. This is very, very wrong.

“My friend! It’s so good to see you again! And your associates, of course. I’m sure we can work out some arrangement that is equitable to all parties.” Alexius opens his arms in a grand gesture.

What.

A voice cuts in from my right. “Are we mages to have no say in deciding our fate?”

 _That_ sounds like the Grand Enchanter I have heard about. Fiona comes to my side, her face twisted with undisguised anger.

“Fiona,” Alexius admonishes her as if she is a naughty child and not one of the most powerful mages in Thedas. I do not believe for a second that she agreed to his _offer_ of her own free will. “You would not have turned your charges over to my care if you did not trust me with their lives.”

It takes everything in my power to control my face, and I’m not sure if I succeed. Leliana’s people cannot get here soon enough. I feel like I’ve been dipped in a cesspit just talking to this man.

“If the Grand Enchanter wants to be part of these talks,” I tell him as steadily as I can, “then I welcome her as a guest of the Inquisition.”

To my left I see approval in Solas’s face.

Fiona breathes out a small sigh of relief. “Thank you.”

Felix is standing at the right of the throne, and he watches his father return to sit there. Alexius sits comfortably. He is unbothered. He feels he is in total control of this meeting. He crosses one leg over the other, leaning back against the throne and setting one elbow on its arm. Everything about this man screams pride.

Hurry, Leliana.

“The Inquisition needs mages to close the Breach,” Alexius says once he is settled. “And I have them. So. What shall you offer in exchange?”

 _Nothing_. I want to yell it in his face. He wants to argue over _people_ like this. As if they are some bauble to bet in a game of stones or cards. I am sickened.

“I’d rather you tell me about these Venatori I’m hearing so much about,” I say to him.

He stops and leans forward. “Now where could you have heard that name?”

Felix turns to his father. “I told her, Father.”

“Felix.” Alexius sits up straight, his body suddenly stiff as silverite. “What have you done?”

“Your son is concerned that you are involved in something terrible,” I say.

“So speaks the thief!” Alexius spits. “Do you think you can turn my son against me?”

Thief? What is he talking about?

“You walk into my stronghold with your stolen mark, a gift you don’t even understand, and think you’re in control?” He stands now, walking to the edge of the dais, peering at me with hate behind his eyes. This is the Alexius I knew we would meet, but I did not expect to meet him so soon. “You’re nothing but a mistake.”

He knows about the mark. He knows about this thing I carry on my body. I am suddenly heavier under the weight of suspicion that Alexius, that these Venatori, had something to do with it in the first place. Maybe everything to do with it. He was never going to discuss sealing the Breach if he was part of what opened it.

“If you know so much, enlighten me,” I tell him. “Tell me what this mark on my hand is for.”

I have never been a brave person, I don’t think. But right now I am angry, filled with fury beyond myself. The explosion at the conclave killed so many people. There is a hole in the sky, a hole in the hearts of millions, and there is a hole in my memory.

I will not back down to this man. I will not.

“It belongs to your betters,” he says. “You wouldn’t even begin to understand its purpose.”

My betters. Except I do understand it. It is part of me now. I may not know the technical terms for the arcane workings of the mark, and as Dorian said when he saw me use it, I may not be able to explain to someone else how it works—but I do know how it works. I feel how it works. I feel the threads of magic that connect me to the Fade with it.

My betters. Such words tell me nothing about myself, but they tell me everything about the people who use them.

“Father,” Felix interrupts. “Listen to yourself. Do you know what you sound like?”

“He sounds exactly like the kind of villainous cliche everyone expects us to be.” I am relieved to hear Dorian’s voice behind me. He strides toward the dais, shaking his head with disgust.

“Dorian,” Alexius says in a low tone. “I gave you a chance to be a part of this. You turned me down. The Elder One has power you would not believe. He will raise the Imperium from its own ashes.”

The Elder One. That is a name I have not yet heard, but something in me feels terror sprout at its mention.

“That’s who you serve?” I say. “The one who killed the Divine. Is he a mage?”

Alexius’s eyes light with something far more dangerous than any magic. There is zeal there, the kind of zeal that leaves a trail of blood behind it.

“Soon he will become a god,” says the magister. His voice rises in timbre and pitch. “He will make the world bow to mages once more! We will rule from the Boric Ocean to the Frozen Seas.”

“No!” Grand Enchanter Fiona gestures sharply with her hand. “You can’t involve my people in this!”

“Alexius,” Dorian breaks in. “This is exactly what you and I talked about never wanting to happen! Why would you support this?”

“Stop it, Father.” Felix moves to stand at his father’s back where Alexius has turned away. “Give up the Venatori. Let the southern mages fight the Breach, and let’s go home.”

“No. It’s the only way, Felix.” Alexius turns to his son, and the fanatic light goes out of his eyes. His voice breaks. “He can save you.”

When we first met Alexius, Felix feigned illness to distract his father to give us a chance to meet Dorian. What is so wrong with him that his father could be so desperate?

“Save me?” Felix sounds utterly disgusted.

“There _is_ a way. The Elder One promised. If I can undo the mistake at the temple—”

“I’m going to die. You need to accept that.” Felix suddenly looks tired, worn down, as threadbare in this place as the veil itself.

His face is defeated, and I do not think it is the mystery illness causing it. His handsome features are sad, drawn. This is a man who has accepted his fate. And this is a man who has watched one of his heroes, his father, fall to a low he will never forgive.

But Alexius ignores him.

“Seize them, Venatori. The Elder One demands this woman’s life.”

There is a small brush of fabric behind me and to my left. Then a gurgle. Then another, and another. In my peripheral vision, one of the guards sinks silently to the floor, an Inquisition scout behind him. Within half a heartbeat, we are surrounded by the sounds of dying Venatori guards.

Leliana is here. Leliana is here.

“Your men are dead, Alexius,” I say, relief warring with anxiety in my core.

But Alexius is not backing down.

“You are a mistake,” he snarls. “You should never have existed.”

An amulet appears in his hand, floating above it, wreathed in deep green light.

“No!” Dorian shouts, flinging a spell at the amulet.

It strikes the magister, staggering him backward, and the world explodes in green.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This quest always makes me cry.


	19. What Must Not Be

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A broken future.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for character death, albeit temporary.

There is a slosh of water before the world comes back.

My feet are suddenly soaked.

“Blood of the Elder One!” A masked guard stumbles through a metal—cell door?—and splashes in knee-deep water.

His partner is quick on his heels. “Where’d they come from?”

I have no idea where I am or what is happening. My head is spinning. I am alone—

I am not alone.

Dorian’s staff is in his hands, and my staff is in mine, and when the guards rush us, suddenly our mana swirls around us, and we both fling spells at the guards. I hit them with Immolate at the same time Dorian does. They are dead in instants, the stench of burning flesh and hair almost preferable to the wet stink of this—wherever we are.

“Displacement,” Dorian muses almost before they are dead. “Interesting. It’s probably not what Alexius intended. The rift must have moved us to, what? The closest confluence of arcane energy?”

He crouches by the wall, examining something. Red lyrium. There is red lyrium growing from the walls of this place. I cannot think about that just yet.

“The last thing I remember, we were in the castle hall,” I say.

It is only me and Dorian. There is no sign of Cassandra or Solas. Wrong. Very, very wrong.

Through the mark I can feel the Breach. It feels as if we’re standing directly under it, the way we were when we fought the pride demon, but that cannot be right. We’re miles away.

“Let’s see,” Dorian says. “If we’re still in the castle, _it_ isn’t. Oh! Of course! It’s not simply _where_. It’s _when_!”

What—shit.

He’s going on. “Alexius used the amulet as a focus! It moved us through time.”

I hate this. I hate everything about this. I can feel the wrongness of this, the impossible made possible.

“Did we go forward in time or back? And how far?” I almost want to laugh. All of—everything. All of everything that has happened, and now we could be back in time before we should even exist. Or forward.

If I had to guess, I would say forward. I stare at the red lyrium. I can feel its heat, its buzz, its hum. It is here, and it is hungry.

“Those are excellent questions.” Dorian peers at me. “We’ll have to find out, won’t we? Let’s look around. See where the rift took us. Then we can figure out how to get back. If we can.”

I don’t like that last sentence.

“What was Alexius trying to do?” Perhaps Dorian knows something, anything that could help us.

“I believe his original plan was to remove you from time completely. If that happened, you would have never been at the Temple of Sacred Ashes or mangled the Elder One’s plan.” He looks as if he hates that as much as I do. “I think your surprise at the castle hall made him reckless. He tossed us into the rift before he was ready, I countered it, the magic went wild, and here we are.”

I want to get moving. Standing in this water is making me itch all over. It’s like we’re bathing in red lyrium tea.

Dorian and I continue to talk as we wade out of the cell after looting the key from one of the guards.

“We didn’t so much travel in time as punch a hole through it and toss it into the privy,” Dorian says as we climb the stairs. He looks at me sideways, and his tone takes on an ironic cast. “But don’t worry. I’m here. I’ll protect you.”

I do laugh at that, though to my own ears it sounds half-panicked. I’m almost all panicked. I know little about the layout of this castle or where we should go next.

For a long while, we simply search the dungeons, and they are a place of horror. Lysas, the young elven mage we met in the village who was so disbelieving about Fiona selling them into servitude, is in one cell next to a monstrous growth of red lyrium.

He doesn’t even see us when we pass. He is singing, staring, soothing nothing. “Andraste blessed me, Andraste blessed me, my tears are my sins, my sins, my sins.”

My breath comes too quickly. There is nothing I can do for him.

I have been more frightened once in my life, and that time is stripped from my memory.

Down another flight of stairs, we find Grand Enchanter Fiona.

Red lyrium is growing out of her body.

I try to talk to her, try to keep the absolute terror from my voice as I ask her the date.

“Harvestmere,” she whispers. “9:42 Dragon.”

A year. We’ve been sent an entire year forward in time.

She tells us Leliana is here somewhere. I don’t know about Cassandra and Solas, and I am nearly shaking when we come to a door upstairs. There are voices on the other side, speaking to each other in Tevene.

My barriers are not so fine as Solas’s yet, but I throw one around Dorian and I both before I kick open the door.

The guards who rush us are only two in number again, and it feels good to fight. My mana feels wilder here. It leaps to my use, and Dorian beside me seems to be taking his fear and anger out on these guards as well.

This is a nightmare, but I know the Fade when I see it. We are awake. We are not dreaming.

If we find Alexius, I will scorch the skin off his body.

Some of my shaking has calmed at the end of the fight, which feels counterintuitive. There is another door opposite, and we take it, following the steps downward again. I don’t know if we’ll find Leliana here—or in what state she will be when we do.

In Haven, before we left, I worked up the courage to ask her about the Hero of Ferelden. Her response then cemented her as someone I respect. To think of her here is unimaginable.

“She’s always in my thoughts, even when we are far apart,” Leliana said then. And a moment later, “When the Inquisition has no further need of me, I will join her. For good this time. I have lost enough. I will not lose her as well.”

“We have to find her,” I say quietly to Dorian. He looks at me sideways. “Leliana.”

He nods, but he doesn’t understand. How could he?

If Neria Mahariel has found love in this world, if she and Leliana have been through the Blight and more and still have one another, the thought of either of them alone in this Void-shredded future is not one I can bear.

At the bottom of the next stairs, I look to my right, and sitting on the floor of a cell with her back to the corner is Cassandra.

The Seeker’s eyes are glowing red, and when she speaks, she speaks a rhythmic cadence that has to be the Chant. “For she who trusts in the Maker, fire is her water.”

Her voice echoes, touched at its edges by something more. The lyrium, like with the others. Though there is no lyrium in her cell. How?

“Cassandra,” I say, my throat aching.

It takes some doing to convince her we are real. We get her out of the cell, and I move farther in to check the others.

In the next cell is Solas.

 _Solas_.

His eyes glow red like the Seeker’s, and unlike her cell, his is not free of the putrid red lyrium. He startles when he sees us, half-stumbling a step backward.

Solas looks at me, and his mouth falls open. “You’re alive,” he says. “We saw you die!”

The anguish in his voice tears at me like claws. Dorian quickly explains, and Solas is quick to understand, hope chasing away the pain in his voice.

His face. His face is wracked by the lyrium, and his voice is not his own. To see him, of all people—I cannot explain why it freezes my tongue in my mouth. For a long moment I don’t think I can speak. Lysas and Fiona were bad enough. Cassandra. But him.

I finally find my words. He looks terrible, but I don’t want to say that.

“I’m glad you understood that,” I say instead. “I’m not sure I did.”

“You would think that such understanding would stop me from making such terrible mistakes. You would be wrong.” I have no idea what Solas means by that, and he goes on before I can ask. “This world is an abomination. It must never come to pass.”

I should feel better having found them. I want to feel better, but instead dread reaches through me. The red lyrium haunts every step we take as we retrace our steps, finding a way up to the torture chambers.

Humans. Such things as torture chambers—they are an abomination, and they exist even in our world, in our time.

It is there we find Leliana.

I cannot meet her eyes as we free her from the manacles where she hangs. Her face has been deeply, horribly burned. She looks like a skeleton, but she snapped her torturer’s neck with her legs the moment we distracted him.

Dorian tries to tell her we will fix everything, that this future doesn’t have to be real. and she cuts him off more firmly than a guillotine.

“I suffered. We all suffered. It. Was. Real.” She says this with finality Dorian does not challenge.

This is not his fault, but I cannot defend him. I see Neria Mahariel as I saw her with my younger eyes, before she was the Warden, before she met Leliana.

If we escape this, if we find our way back, I will never chase this future from my mind.

Leliana knows this castle. She leads us through it with an ease that belies her body’s brutal suffering, and every time Dorian opens his mouth to ask about what happened, to ask about Felix, she silences him with a look or a sharp, “Stop. Talking.”

Solas and Cassandra are quiet, and in my periphery it looks like they are listening to something beyond my ken.

I find myself staying close to Dorian, lingering at his shoulder. I barely know him, but he is the only unbroken connection to the world we left, the world we need to save. He is warm and alive. I have to believe that he will find us our way home.

When we leave the dungeons and docks behind and emerge into the open air of a courtyard, I lose my breath.

This. This is why I felt the Breach so strongly even in the dungeon.

It covers the sky.

“The Breach! It is everywhere!” Cassandra must not have known.

There are rifts in the courtyard, and between the fighting, I piece together what has befallen the world. Demons. An _army_ of demons marching through Orlais. Empress Celene, assassinated.

I fight the demons from the rifts because I have to.

When we return to the castle, though, we find Venatori, and I fight them with a fury I have never felt in my entire existence.

If we cannot get back to Alexius, if we cannot get back to our own time, these Venatori will murder the world.

It feels as if we have been fighting forever by the time we finally make it into the main hall of Redcliffe castle. At the end, there is an enormous door that clearly leads where we need it to—but there is no way to open it.

“Search the Venatori,” I order the others. “There must be some way to open this.”

“Alexius has to eat,” Dorian agrees.

The third body we search has something. It reminds me of the shards we’ve found in the Hinterlands, revealed by the ocularum. A shard of red lyrium that looks like it will fit in the small slots on the door.

Grim, we press onward through the castle, killing every Venatori in our path. The castle is a shambles, with walls and dirt and wood piled up in the corridors and red lyrium growing everywhere.

We finally collect five of the shards, which Dorian thinks will be enough.

It is.

The shards flash with red light when the fifth is inserted into the door, and it opens.

We find Alexius much where we left him, with a ghoulish servant who crouches at his feet, staring at the floor.

Alexius is unsurprised to see us.

“I did not know it would be now, but I knew I hadn’t destroyed you,” he says. “It doesn’t matter now. All we can do is wait for the end.”

That more than anything ignites my rage. “It does matter,” I say. “I will undo this.”

“How many times have I tried? The past cannot be undone. All that I fought for, all I betrayed, and what has it wrought? Ruin and death. The Elder One comes. For you, for me, for us all.”

Leliana moves so quickly that I barely see her. She has a knife to the servant’s neck.

“Felix!” Alexius cries.

“That’s Felix?” Dorian’s breath breaks on his friend’s name, but it kindles into anger with his next words. “Maker’s breath, Alexius! What have you done?”

“He would have died, Dorian! I saved him.” Alexius is looking at his son with longing, love. “Please, don’t hurt my son. I’ll do anything you ask!”

Alexius stretches out his hand as if he knows he cannot stop her, but he wants to.

The Blight. Felix must have the Blight. He doesn’t struggle in Leliana’s arms.

“Let him go, Leliana,” I tell her. “Felix is innocent.”

She doesn’t look at me. Her eyes are trained on Alexius only. “No one is innocent.”

She slits Felix’s throat.

“No!” Alexius shouts.

I feel his magic begin, and just as quickly, Solas’s barrier. Leliana flies backward into the wall with a thud, and the rest of us are moving. Cassandra shouts, her voice two-toned and terrifying through the lyrium that has changed her.

And I move with them.

Finally, an outlet. An outlet beyond the nameless Venatori who have fought for this horror of a world. When Alexius summons a rift, hiding behind his own barrier, my magic cuts down his demons. My mark heals the air.

And then, almost too quickly, it is over.

It is not over.

Dorian takes the amulet, pain heavy on his face. “This is the same amulet he used before. I think it’s the same one we made in Minrathous. That’s a relief. Give me an hour to work out the spell he used, and I should be able to reopen the rift.”

“An hour?” Leliana cuts in. “That’s impossible! You must go now.”

The floor shakes beneath us as she says it, and a screeching wail rises through the air. We stumble as the ground moves.

“The Elder One,” she breathes.

“You cannot stay here!” Solas says urgently. He and Cassandra exchange an anguished look, one I can read all too well. “We’ll hold the outer door. When they get past us, it’ll be your turn.”

 _Solas_.

“No!” It’s out of my mouth in a fraction of a heartbeat. “I won’t let you commit suicide!”

“Look at us,” Leliana says, gently in spite of everything—in spite of everything she has been through. “We’re already dead. The only way we live is if this day never comes.”

Solas and Cassandra are already turning away. This is happening. This is real, and it is happening.

“Cast your spell,” Leliana says. “You have as much time as I have arrows.”

The door closes. Solas and Cassandra are on the other side. We are here, we are here.

Dorian moves to the farthest end of the hall, pulling out the amulet and wasting no time.

It feels like only seconds before we hear the sound of fighting, shouting. I hear their voices. I hear the wails of demons. The ground shakes again.

The door rumbles.

“Though darkness closes, I am shielded by flame,” Leliana says, drawing an arrow.

I can do nothing. I am helpless. Dorian is working, and I am helpless, useless, doing nothing but waiting and watching people I care about prepare to die for me.

The door booms open, and through it come demons. Terrors. Venatori.

Solas’s body lands on the floor, tossed aside.

His eyes stare into nothing.

An inhuman noise of pain escapes my throat.

“Andraste guide me,” Leliana is saying, firing arrows more quickly than should be possible. “Maker, take me to your side.”

An arrow strikes Leliana in the chest, and she cries out. I lurch forward, but Dorian catches my arm.

“No! You move and we all die!”

He is right. I know he is right.

The rift is opening. I feel it tugging, waiting. Dorian pulls me toward it.

A terror has Leliana around the neck. There is a lump beyond, shaped like the Seeker’s armour.

I cannot take my eyes from Solas’s unseeing face.

It is the last thing I see.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All the closeness that has been growing between Ilaana and Solas, this future would be so enormously devastating to live. Especially with the kinship she feels for Leliana, as well. The first many times I played through In Hushed Whispers, it was always Varric's or Cassandra's body I saw thrown on the floor. The first time it was Solas's, I felt like I was punched in the heart.
> 
> Imagining the Inquisitor falling in love with him only to see her lover's body flung on the floor without truly knowing Dorian will succeed in getting them back, unable to go to him, unable to stop his death--that would be enormously traumatic.
> 
> What he says to her in his cell, too--that is the first major moment where he lets slip he is more than he seems. He flat out compares his own mistakes with the abomination of a world created by Corypheus and the Breach to the Inquisitor, and she takes that memory with her.


	20. What Is

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ilaana is hurting, and is offered solace.

I remember little of what happens when we get back.

My body feels as if I have been picked up by the feet and slammed back and forth.

Queen Anora is there. Cassandra is urging me to conscript the mages. Her voice sounds normal. Solas is himself again, alive and I cannot stop looking at him to make sure. He is telling me I am the mages’ last hope for freedom. They are here and they are alive, but they are also dead on the floor in another world.

In another world. Not this one. But it doesn’t matter. I was there. It was real.

Somehow my voice welcomes the mages to the Inquisition as allies. Somehow. Somehow I make it out of Redcliffe castle. Somehow we make it back to Haven.

I am exhausted when we meet in the Chantry. Dorian is there. Cullen is furious that I’ve offered the mages full rights as equals. Cassandra is too—I know she is—but she supports me anyway, and I think I love her for it. I can’t feel myself. I can’t feel this world. The Breach feels like it should, or as close to _should_ as it ever could since it shouldn’t exist at all.

We are alive, somehow.

I meet Dorian’s eyes when he tells me he’s staying.

“There’s no one I’d rather be stranded in time with,” I tell him.

He gives me a smile, a real smile, a broken smile, and I know he knows. I know he understands, even as he quips back with words that go in one of my ears and right out the other.

And when I am back, in my small house with its small cheery fire, I strip off my armour that still smells like wrongness. I climb into the bathtub someone prepared. I soak until I cannot bear sitting and steeping in the water any longer, and I dress in clean clothes, and then I climb into my bed.

I expect to cry. Instead I stare at the ceiling and it stares back, filling my mind with memories of those last horrible moments before Dorian opened the rift and brought us home.

Home.

Such a strange word.

The candle on the table flickers. And unexpectedly, there is a knock at the door.

“Come in,” I say, expecting…no one. I don’t know who would knock.

I absolutely do not expect Solas.

He halts suddenly just inside the door, seeing me in bed. My face suddenly flames into a blush.

“I am sorry,” he says. “I did not—were you expecting someone?”

I sit up hurriedly. I’m still fully dressed, and he blinks at that.

“I wasn’t expecting anyone,” I tell him, my face suddenly burning. Oh, Creators, does he think I was expecting a lover? _Who_ even? “I don’t know who I thought it was.”

There is an awkward silence.

I nod to the chair across the room. “Please, sit.”

He does, sitting on the chair sideways. The crackle of the fireplace is the only sound for a moment.

“I saw the Seeker when I returned from my walk. She told me more of what you saw in this dark future, and I thought perhaps…” he pauses, looking surprised yet again, but at himself this time. “I thought perhaps I should see if you were okay.”

I rub my face with my palm. I could lie and tell him I’m fine, but—Creators, I probably look the farthest thing from fine.

“I’m not okay,” I say finally.

“Would you like to talk about it?” He is here. Solas is here, in my…room. And he is alive. He is not dead on the floor of that ghastly world.

I stare into his face for too long a moment, and he lets me without making me feel like it is the wrong thing to do.

I am as broken as Dorian. More. “I don’t know if I can—”

“By all means, I would not wish to make you uncomfortable—”

“—I mean I don’t know if I can find the right words,” I finish, interrupting him. “I could tell you there was red lyrium growing out of the walls, out of people’s bodies. I could tell you I saw that elven mage Lysas gone completely mad, singing the Chant in a monotone without so much as seeing my face.”

Solas goes still, his eyes on my face, searching.

“I could tell you about Leliana.” My voice cracks saying her name. I close my eyes, swallowing. I do not want to cry in front of Solas again. “I could tell you we walked in on the Venatori torturing her. I could tell you how Dorian steadied me, how sure he was he could get us home. I could tell you what you—”

My voice breaks again then. Can I tell him what he said to me when we found him? _You would think such understanding would stop me from making such terrible mistakes. You would be wrong._

He watches me and says nothing.

“You died,” I say finally, my voice hardly above a whisper. “The Elder One came for us, and you and Cassandra bought me and Dorian the time we needed to get back. They threw your body on the floor, and you were dead, and I watched Cassandra die, and I watched Leliana die, and part of _me_ I think died, and then suddenly Dorian brought us back.”

“Ilaana,” Solas says softly. He so seldom says my name that I look up immediately. “I am sorry. I am sorry you had to live through something so painful.”

“It was real, Solas,” I say. I can barely breathe. “Leliana told us that too, when Dorian was saying we could still stop it from happening. She was right. It was real.”

He looks like he might protest, but I cut him off.

“I know it will not happen now. It should not happen now. But I will never chase that sight from my mind. I couldn’t bear—” I stop. What in Mythal’s name am I _saying_? “I have never met someone like you. I’m not sure anyone has ever sought me out to simply see if I was okay.”

Solas is quiet. The firelight dances on his face, in his eyes. “Such a thing seems the bare minimum of friendship.”

I see him realise in that moment that I have never truly had a friend.

For a second I think I see anger in his face, then it is quickly gone, fire turned to ash.

I feel foolish.

“In myself I could do nothing to get us back,” I say then, changing the subject. “The worst part of those final moments was that all I could do was wait, standing there, watching my—watching my friends die and having no way to stop it. Dorian worked the spell. Dorian understood the magic. Leliana and Cassandra and you—you fought. I just…stood there. I have felt loneliness more times than I can count, but until that moment I never knew how alone I could be.”

_You died and I could not move a finger to save you._

Pain crosses Solas’s face. “More than anything, I am sorry you felt that. It is not something I would wish on an enemy, let alone someone—” he breaks off, sounding bewildered. Someone what? He collects himself and goes on. “But Ilaana, you did not do simply nothing. You navigated that horrific place and you returned. You gave the mages of Ferelden and Orlais a place to belong as equals. You ensured their help to close the Breach—such things cannot be overstated. You accomplished something real.”

He thinks that? “Thank you, Solas.”

“The credit is yours,” he says simply.

To my complete surprise, he stands and walks over to me where I sit on my bed. He crouches in front of me, allowing me to look directly into his eyes from a higher vantage instead of towering over me.

“May I sit?” he asks.

“Please,” I answer.

He rises only enough to sit next to me, close enough that our legs are touching.

I see his concern in the set of his shoulders, in the line of his neck as he turns to face me. Solas is close. I feel his body heat, his mana overlapped with mine.

“What would help you, lethallin?”

“You are helping already, Solas.” I do not want to cry, but I am close to it anyway. Prickles like tiny thorns in my eyes.

“There is no weakness in feeling the weight of an event,” he says. “It is not a forfeit to take the measure of your pain.”

“I know.” I do.

We are quiet. I can almost feel his heartbeat.

 _His body hits the floor._ I close my eyes against the intrusive memory.

When I open them, he is watching me. Solas turns toward me at an angle, our knees bumping.

“I am only one of the faces you saw there, but I am one of them. And I am alive.”

Solas is indeed alive, in front of me.

“Garas quenathra, Solas?” It should not be his duty to comfort me. “I am thankful you came, but...I have no wish to be a burden.”

“You are not a burden,” he says firmly.

I turn toward him, and he takes my hands in his. Now I can feel his heartbeat against the smooth, soft skin of his wrist.

The mark flickers, flares. It grows brighter, then gutters. Neither of us have reached for our mana.

“You have been a friend to me when I had none, lethallin,” he says. “Let me be one to you.”

His hands are warm and solid. Solas is doing nothing magical, but somehow he is pouring strength into me through this single simple touch. When he moves one of his hands away, it is only to scoot closer to me and take me in his arms. There is no demand in this touch, no hunger, only an offer of closeness that I am not used to receiving.

I do not cry, but I listen to the rise and fall of his chest, feel his heart beating in the hollow of his throat. I simply sit next to a Solas who is provably alive, and he offers this to me, to soothe me.

It does not last long. It lasts a lifetime. It lasts a second.

When he pulls back, I feel steadier. Calmer. I sense that he correctly surmised the distress seeing him dead caused me. He is gentle. I wish that he could stay, and I know that will not be. The knowledge doesn’t hurt.

Solas speaks, and though I feel the absence of his touch, I won’t presume it meant more.

“I should go,” he says. “But if you like, perhaps we can walk together tomorrow. I found a grove on the other side of the lake that I would like to show you. Perhaps we can speak about the People, since we have had little time to do so.”

“I would like that,” I tell him. “Ma serranas.”

“I hope you find some sleep, lethallin,” he tells me.

He hesitates for the barest moment before leaving, and then he is gone.

I lie back on my bed again. Again he comes to me, cares what I feel.

He uses _lethallin_ instead of _lethallan_. Keeper Deshanna says that once the elvhen people did not distinguish the word for gender. It fits Solas that he would use it the same way it was once used.

That he uses it at all for me warms me. Aside from the single time he called me da'len, after I called him hahren, he has only ever spoken to me like an equal.

I am calmer, now. My mind is no longer stuck on seeing his face staring up at the ceiling with monsters all around him.

He is alive. Leliana is alive. Cassandra is alive.

And Dorian is here. My heart gives a pang—I resolve to speak with him tomorrow to see if he is okay himself. He is a Tevinter mage in the south, surrounded by people who will view him suspiciously on that basis alone, not least of all considering what Alexius has just tried to do. He is surrounded by strangers and has no friends.

Solas has shown me what it is like to have a friend.

I will be one for Dorian, then. It is thanks to him I am here at all.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I headcanon the lethallin thing, even though when Solas uses it in-game it's probably a glitch. Ilaana is pretty meh about gender.
> 
> He cannot stay away from her if he senses she is in pain.


	21. Every Day is a School Day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Solas is still caring for Ilaana in the aftermath of Redcliffe, and Ilaana is thankful for her new Tevinter friend.

I find Dorian the next morning by accident when I go to find Solas, who is not in his usual place. The door to Solas’s house is closed, and before I can knock, I see Dorian leaning against the corner of the house across from Solas’s.

“If it isn’t my new friend, the Herald!” he says when he sees me. It makes me happy to hear that word in his voice. Friend. “It occurs to me that as far as I know, that is your name. Do you perhaps have a different one I should call you?”

“Ilaana,” I tell him. “Enough people call me the Herald—please, just Ilaana.”

“Lovely. Dorian of House Pavus, most recently of Minrathous. Though now I suppose that’s Haven.” Dorian looks around with a look of pleased acceptance of his surroundings that is spoilt only by the glint of mischief in his eyes. “How do you do?”

“Better in this time than the other one,” I tell him. “You? I know I was awake much of the night trying to chase memories from my head.”

“I don’t doubt it,” Dorian says. The spark of mischief fades. “I know that he hardly deserves it, but if the Inquisition is to judge Alexius, I hope they will show him mercy. He was my mentor once. I am ashamed to see what he has become.”

“If there is anything I can do—”

“Oh, not to worry,” Dorian interrupts, waving away the subject like a persistent fly. “Was there something you wanted to talk about?”

“I was coming to meet Solas,” I say, gesturing at the still-closed door, though the curtain is open, so he may very well see me. “But I’m glad to have run into you.”

“Of course you are. I’m marvellous to run into.”

If there was any doubt I was going to love this man, one look at the winsome smile he’s beaming my way banishes it. To think, one of the first human men I meet and he is someone I already think of as a friend.

The hunters of my clan would never stop whispering if they knew.

Then again, they’ve never been stranded in some terror-scape of a nightmare world with a human man who is their only hope of getting home.

They can stuff their opinions, come to think of it.

“I was wondering, actually,” I say hesitantly. “Would you be willing to teach me some of the arcane terminology you and Solas were using? My clan’s Keeper is a skilled mage, but I would like to better understand why it works as much as I understand how to make it work.”

I half expect Dorian to make fun of me for the question, but instead he lights up.

“I would be delighted,” he says. “We don’t get Dalish clans roaming as far as Tevinter, for obvious reasons. I would welcome the chance to learn how you’ve studied as well.”

“It’s a deal,” I tell him.

He is as eager for knowledge as Solas is. I hope they will find a way to be friends themselves.

This morning I feel lighter, more confident. I’m very pleased he agreed. I’m not used to my curiosity being met with eagerness to explain. I want to learn everything I can about whatever I can. Even without my role in the Inquisition, I would want that. Being here has done nothing if not show me how little I know about so many things.

I hear a door open behind me and turn to see Solas, clothed in his usual long sweater, his wolf jawbone clearly visible.

“Good morning,” I tell him. “I was going to knock in a moment, but you’ve beaten me to it.”

“It seems the two of you have plans, so I’ll excuse myself before your politeness requires you to let me tag along,” Dorian says, half-bowing with more than a half flourish. “I think I’ll go pester the Seeker about getting a closer look at the Breach.”

“You’ll likely find her training with the forces,” Solas supplies helpfully. “Perhaps if you pester her, she will be less likely to pester me.”

“Excellent,” says Dorian, striding away in the wrong direction.

I hesitate for a moment. “He’ll find her eventually, right?”

Solas chuckles. “Haven isn’t so big that he’ll get lost. Shall we?”

We walk, speaking of mundane things until we’re outside of Haven. I can’t help but notice he visibly relaxes the same way I do when we leave behind the sound of practice swords clashing and the blacksmith’s anvil. We walk carefully across the frozen lake instead of going around it. He has traveled alone for a long time, I think. Perhaps the crush of people around us is as much a strain on him as it is on me. I appreciate that he invited me along.

“Did I hear you asking Dorian for magical instruction?” Solas asks suddenly as we climb the rocks on the far side of the lake.

“Not so much the magic itself, but the theory of it. I was listening to the two of you speak on the way to Redcliffe and realised I don’t have the language for even much of the magic I do know. There are many things I have studied with my clan in my training as First, but the precise terminology wasn’t part of it much.” This close to the Breach, the mark flares as we walk, and I look at it, the curved lines almost like an imprint of something else. “You have been so generous with your time and your knowledge that I didn’t want to overburden you.”

“I am happy to help as well, regardless, though as far as the practical use of magic goes, yours is already fluid and a pleasure both to observe and fight beside,” Solas tells me, surprising me again. A pleasure to observe? He goes on. “Much of Tevinter magic was pillaged from our people over the ages. It will be...interesting to see what they have done with it from the perspective of one of their mages.”

Of course. I should have remembered that.

“Perhaps we will all learn something new,” he says, motioning to me to follow him up a snowy path around an outcropping of rock.

“That sounds like the best possible outcome,” I say.

“It is indeed.”

For a moment, I thought he might be a little hurt that I asked Dorian first and not him, but it seems he isn’t. He seems both unworried and disinclined to jealousy. I find that freeing, the thought and the certainty that I’m right easing a small tight space I didn’t know was there. Solas knows now how few friends I have had. It would be unkind of him to expect to be my only friend, even if Dorian is Tevinter. As soon as I think it, I feel lighter.

The silence stretches on, punctuated by our feet crunching in the snow. I decided to forego my boots today, and the snow feels nice under my feet. I miss not needing to wear shoes everywhere, and Solas’s bare feet make me feel that warm glow again.

Friendship, he said last night. That is all he will want from me.

The small ache that accompanies the thought confuses me. It has been so long since I felt that ache, for anyone. The wanting—of what, I’m not even sure. I glance involuntarily up at the Breach, still present. Always present.

Do I want Solas to want something else from me? Do I want friendship _and_? The thought is discomfiting. Among my clan, there were trysts and relationships, of course. But I was one title away from being a pariah. For a time, Anuon and I were lovers. We were young and clumsy, and we learned our bodies together, but she is a hunter, and I was the First, and eventually the hunters’ dislike of me made her pull away.

When we met other clans—a rare occurrence, but one often celebrated for its rareness—sometimes I would seek out someone among them who hadn’t grown up whispering about me. The clan Second of the Sabrae clan, Merrill’s clan, was one such person. Datishan was his name. His name meant _little respite_ , and he was that. Our clans were near each other for perhaps a month, and I spent much of that month with him. We roamed Sundermount together, exploring the ancient places of our people and occasionally fighting off giant spiders who were driven to aggression by the thinness of the veil and the presence of hungry spirits.

I liked the way we fit together, Datishan and I. He was gentle, and I was gentle, and together we discovered we also liked being less gentle. What had been curiosity and discovery with Anuon became confidence with Datishan, and we left love bites on each other’s bodies, and for the first time in my life I felt the pull of desire. Datishan treated me like I was a person, even though he’d heard of my clan’s whispers of me.

He survived the Sabrae clan’s near-annihilation. I do not know what became of him.

With Solas still walking in front of me, my feet feel unsteady on my path, and I’m not sure if I mean the literal snow-covered path I’m following or the wider one in this new place that I am trying to pick my way through. There is so much danger here; Redcliffe showed me that. If it hurt like it did to see Solas fall in battle there, how much worse would it be to see if I admit to having feelings for him?

I think I just admitted it to myself.

Solas himself pauses, looking at the mountains ahead, then he glances over his shoulder to beckon me on.

It doesn’t matter anyway. There’s little chance he would ever look at me that way. I believe I am no longer simply a tool to use against the Breach, but there is a wide, wide gap between being a person and being someone he could see as a lover.

I can’t tell him.

So I follow until we reach the grove, and I listen to him while he speaks with tender, awe-filled care of the histories of our people, of their magic, of spirits strange and wonderful, of Arlathan and what we’ve lost. Of the Fade, and how it could help show us how to rebuild.

Solas calls me friend, and that is something I will cherish. He calls me lethallin, acknowledging me as an equal and a peer. And sometimes, he calls me Ilaana, and the sound of my name in his voice makes me feel like no one else has said it before.

We sit comfortably close in the grove. We share stories of things we have seen and tales of things we still hope to. He creates a halla from ice with magic, and I create a wolf of flame and lightning. We make them chase each other in circles in the snow. We speak of boring petty things, like how our barriers are better than Vivienne’s and why, and we speak of mysteries and quiet places. We talk about how our spells feel as we cast them, compare our techniques, find small ways to improve them.

Around us the grove of evergreens sparkles in the sun. From here we cannot see Haven. From here this can feel like a haven.

I am thankful he brought me into this quiet place.

When we finally return, the sun is setting over the mountains, and he walks me to the door to my little house.

“Enaste, lethallin,” I tell him softly. _Ma melava halani_ is what I want to say, but do not dare. “You brought me something I did not expect to find so soon after…”

After Redcliffe.

“May I ask what?” The sun is almost gone, but it shines upon his back, haloing him.

Does he truly not know?

“En’an’sal’in.” I meet his eyes. “Thank you.”

His face softens. “‘Ma neral, da’lath’in. I am glad you found some peace today,” Solas says. “Will I see you at dinner?”

“Of course,” I tell him.

“Until later, then.” He smiles again as he leaves, and the setting sun lights his face in profile.

The glow of the sunset rays warms me even in the cold.

He is the most beautiful person I have ever seen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really love the bond between Dorian and the Inquisitor. Was not expecting that man to make me cry in Trespasser.
> 
> Elvhen from FenxShiral's Project Elvhen. I do love a good con-lang.
> 
> Enaste = thank you (lit. grace/blessing)  
> Ma melava halani = an archaic thank you between intimates ("you have spent your time to help me", according to FenxShiral)  
> En'an'sal'in = comfort after trauma/pain  
> 'Ma neral, da'lath'in = my pleasure, little heart (the endearment comes with the connotation of the receiver of the word being someone who wears their heart on their sleeve/feels deeply)


	22. An Act of Kindness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mage and templar, fumbling into friendship.

The days trickle by like sands through their glass, and the mages slowly arrive in Haven.

Cassandra is frazzled by their arrival—someone seems to have thought it a good joke to sic them on her with any and all of their grievances—and Cullen is curt and worried enough that I finally decide I need to speak with him about it.

I find him in the middle of the forces’ training, discussing some report or another with one of his officers. He holds up a hand to cut off something the officer is saying.

“You there!” he calls to one of the recruits. “There’s a shield in your hand. Block with it. If that man were your enemy, you’d be dead!”

I pause in my approach. He hasn’t seen me yet.

He turns to the officer. “Lieutenant, don’t hold back. The recruits must prepare for a real fight, not a practice one.”

“Yes, Commander,” the lieutenant salutes with his fist to his chest and leaves.

Cullen looks up and sees me then. Without preamble, he says, “We’ve received a number of recruits—locals from Haven and some pilgrims. None made _quite_ the entrance you did.”

A small smile dances around the corner of his mouth when he says it. It loosens some of the tension in my chest. I remember first meeting him in the war room, where his wry humour put me at ease there, too.

“At least I got everyone’s attention,” I say.

“That you did,” he says, his smile curving into being. He gestures at me to follow, and I do, weaving between the training recruits. “I was recruited to the Inquisition in Kirkwall, myself. I was there during the mage uprising—I saw firsthand the devastation it caused.”

Something in me closes up a bit at that. A runner tries to interrupt with a sudden, “Ser,” but Cullen goes on.

“Cassandra sought a solution. When she offered me a position, I left the templars to join her cause.” Cullen takes the proffered report from the runner, glancing at it even though I still feel his full attention on me. “Now it seems we face something far worse.”

“The conclave destroyed, a giant hole in the sky—things aren’t looking good,” I agree.

“Which is why we’re needed,” he says, handing the report back to the runner. “The Chantry lost control of both templars and mages. Now they argue over a new Divine while the Breach remains. The Inquisition could act when the Chantry cannot. Our followers would be part of that. There’s so much we can—forgive me. I doubt you came here for a lecture.”

“No, but if you have one prepared, I’d love to hear it.” The words startle me. He’s been borderline playful, and I’ve just responded in kind. My ears grow warm. Perhaps that was too familiar.

“Another time, perhaps,” he says with a laugh.

I smile, and I can feel it’s lopsided.

“I, ah…” Cullen clears his throat. “There’s still a lot of work ahead.”

Another soldier approaches. “Commander! Ser Rylen has a report on our supply lines.”

Cullen smiles at me sideways. “As I was saying.”

He starts to walk away.

For a moment I forget why I even came here, but then I remember. I hurry to catch up.

“Commander, I’m sorry—I meant to talk to you about our new allies.”

He stops and turns, and some of the spark fades a bit in his eyes.

“The mages are ready to approach the Breach,” he says. “I hope it will be enough to close it.”

“Would you be more confident if I’d brought back templars instead?” I ask him quietly.

He crosses his arms.

“I’d be less worried about the thin veil resulting in mass possession. But I will not endanger the alliance you’ve created,” he adds, looking at me, and I’m relieved to see something that resembles understanding in his eyes. “We need their help. Any precautions taken will be to ensure the safety of our people and the mages themselves. Nothing more.”

I feel somewhat better, hearing that. I could not in good conscience have welcomed Fiona into our ranks only to make her feel like she were in a cage again.

“You weren’t happy with how I brought in the mages,” I say carefully. “I suppose I’d like to know if you have a problem with me as well.”

Something of my hurt must show in my face. He opens his mouth in surprise, then appears to consider. I can almost see him remembering the heated discussions in the war room, his words about mages.

“Of course not,” he says gently. He sighs heavily. “The mages are putting themselves at risk to help the Inquisition, as are you. I hope you will accept any of my concerns as such.”

I nod, feeling a little unsteady. “Thank you, Commander. I respect that you left the templars to work with Cassandra, and you’ve been nothing but kind to me. I just had to ask.”

Cullen uncrosses his arms, then crosses them again. His face is surprisingly open and soft. I get the feeling he has worried I might be harbouring such questions. What that says about him, I’m not sure. It means something anyway, his kindness.

“You have been thrown into quite a mess of a situation,” he says after a long pause. “I would not have you think for a moment that the people you’re working with—any of us—disrespect you for any part of who you are. I hope I’ve assuaged any such doubts you might have had about me. I...”

He trails off. I remember an early impression of him from when we first met, that this man had known pain.

I wait for him to speak, trying not to rush him.

“When I said I saw the devastation caused by the mage uprising in Kirkwall, that is of course not the full picture of what happened. Knight-Commander Meredith was driven mad by red lyrium, and it took me too long to see it.” The pain is clear on his face now. He looks past me, or maybe through me. “Many mages were hurt in the meantime. What happened could have perhaps been prevented, had I not been…well.”

Someone else is flagging him, trying to get his attention.

I suddenly am all too aware that I’ve interrupted him, and he is very busy preparing for our assault on the Breach.

“Forgive me,” I tell him. “I’m keeping you from your duties.”

“Another time,” he says. “It is not my favourite thing to speak of, but if it would set your mind at ease to know me better, please don’t hesitate to ask.”

“You’ve already set my mind at ease, Commander,” I tell him. “Truly. Thank you.”

He reddens a little, but then he nods. “Then I’m glad you brought it up.”

With that, he’s gone, and I walk along the edge of the lake. I do feel better.

When I left my clan, I did not expect to find people who would accept me. I certainly didn’t expect to find so many.

With a small smile, I head back up the hill toward Varric. Perhaps he can teach me to play Wicked Grace.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cullen has been through some shit, and he's grown so tremendously since Origins that I have an increasing soft spot for the man, especially since he clearly has a crush on the Inquisitor.


	23. One Tear, Mended

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stolen hope of tomorrow, wrested from the sky itself.

It takes me a long time to fall asleep the night before we march on the Breach.

I’ve been trying every night to remember my dreams, and throughout the days I’ve begun a small ritual of periodically making myself aware that I’m awake. I’ve slipped into the Fade more easily as I sleep, and I’ve started to notice more around me when I do. I’ve heard that Dreamers draw more demons to them, but so far either I haven’t crossed the line into qualifying as a Dreamer or the demons haven’t decided to bother me. Either way, making any small progress feels…extraordinary.

Tonight, I want to seek. I might not survive the attempt to close the Breach. If I don’t, at least I will have tried something new and hopefully learned something in the process.

The Fade is still eerily quiet, and above my head, the Breach is bright, bright.

There are no spirits around that I can see.

Perhaps it is reckless of me to look from Haven, but Solas’s words have transformed the part of me that treated this place as only a danger, never a wonder. I cautiously pick my way down the path, toward the village.

There. A glow, near the tavern. A wisp.

It seems shy, darting in and out of sight, wondering who I am.

I reach out with a tendril of my mana, just the barest taste of spirit magic. This close to the Breach, it feels stronger than it should, or brighter. Different. It leaps to my use.

The wisp ventures closer. It seems like it’s peeking at me.

“Hello,” I say softly.

The wisp comes out, hovering in the air in front of me. It brightens, then dims again, and then it zooms in a small curl and comes to rest not far from my face.

I reach out a hand to it, and the wisp lights on my palm. It feels curious, eager, but also afraid of the hole in the sky between our worlds.

And then we’re not alone.

More wisps appear, drifting out of buildings.

Neria Mahariel was here once, I heard. She came to the Temple of Sacred Ashes, and first she found Haven occupied by a cult of dragon worshippers.

The wisps zoom around me, excited all the sudden. They glow brighter the closer they come to me, and I can’t help the feeling that they’re trying to…reflect me somehow.

I wonder what I look like to them.

No sooner do I think it than does an image of me appear, pulsing bright like a beacon, my entire body aglow.

Startled, I take a step back. The wisps dim, then brighten again, swirling closer as if to reassure me.

There is a question in the air. They want to show me something.

I follow.

They lead me down a path in the village, and then I see her. Neria Mahariel, with King Alistair—before he was king—at her back. And Leliana at her side, younger, brighter, her face full of hope and love and I _feel_ what she feels for Neria because the spirits and wisps here felt it. She is unsure, uncertain, waiting for Neria to give her a sign and hoping she’s not imagining those tiny touches, those fleeting glances that linger too long when she thinks she’s not looking. The woman with them is watching, almost too watchful. This other woman has white hair. I am not certain of her name, but the spirits whisper to me. Wynne. They are in awe of her. She—she speaks to them.

They show me a Haven washed in blood magic, altars stained with the lives of travellers who wandered too close. They show me the fanatics, their zeal full of fire and conviction, their righteous certainty that they are right up until the moment they are dead.

Wisps tug at me pulling me toward the Temple of Sacred Ashes. Here it is not destroyed. Here it is enormous, fresh-built and time-worn at once. They remember.

An ancient guardian draws them through trials, puzzles to prove their worth. I remember the story of Tamlen; I remember how Neria came to be a Grey Warden. When he appears to her, I see her pain. Her face is marked for Sylaise, and her eyes are blue, so blue. Bluer still when they fill with tears. The wisps know how much shame she felt for Tamlen’s loss, the corruption she had to take into herself to stave off following him forever. She feels defiled by the darkspawn blood she drank in the Joining. She tells no one how the dreams haunt her. Not even Leliana, not yet. Someday she will.

Someday she will find a way to be clean again.

They show me Leliana’s face as she comes into the presence of Andraste’s urn, the tears streaming down her cheeks. Neria does not understand Andraste, but the wisps show me how she treats the urn with reverence, because _Leliana_ cares, so Neria cares.

I see why Leliana loves her.

“Thank you,” I whisper to the wisps.

Solas was right.

There is nothing like this. At my fingertips all this time and I never knew, never tried.

The wisps trail behind me as I walk the Fade path back to Haven.

I have never tried to control my dreams before, but I think I’d like to slip into one now. The wisps hum and bounce, joyful in spite of the danger around us. They are happy to be seen by someone who does not fear them.

When I think of Solas, they glow still brighter. I’m not sure if they’re reflecting me or him.

The Fade shifts around me, into a usual dream. I am in the forest, alone. A brook dances its way through the trees beside me.

For a time I simply rest.

 

Too soon, it is time to wake.

I dress carefully. Harritt has made me new armour again, this time battlemage armour instead of an apprentice coat. The leather is ram leather, deep purple and warm. He’s put feathers between the layers of pauldrons. I think he’s been spending too much time with Cullen.

It wraps at my waist with everknit wool, and the buttons up the front are obsidian. It’s the finest clothing I’ve ever owned, and if we succeed today, I feel like it is only the beginning. I’m not sure how I feel about that.

But it’s comfortable. It suits me. Harritt asked me about colours and what I wanted, and he listened when I told him.

I can’t bring myself to eat anything, but I do allow the elven girl who knocks on my door—her name, I’ve found, is Elera—to bring me tea. I insist that she stay with me and share it, and she does.

Since that awkward first waking here in Haven, she has opened up, relaxed. She is sixteen, the same age I was when I got my vallaslin. She is curious about the Dalish, even though she was raised Andrastian in the Denerim alienage. I listen to her as she chats happily about the scout she fancies. I’ve noticed she’s started drinking her tea the same way I do, with milk and sugar. Luxuries to me, and to her.

“Are you nervous, your worship?” Elera asks me this as we’re almost finished with our tea. No matter how much she has relaxed, she insists on using my title instead of my name.

“Yes,” I tell her honestly. “The last time I was there, closing even the rift beneath the Breach knocked me unconscious for days. Again.”

Two smaller holes in my memory, along with the bigger one. Days after I fell out of that rift, and days after I closed it.

Elera gives me an anxious smile herself, ducking her head. “I know you can do it. We believe you can. We all believe you can.”

As if on cue, the mark flares.

“Thank you, Elera,” I tell her. “I’ll see you when we get back.”

I find Solas and the others in the Chantry. Cullen and Cassandra are giving orders to squad leaders, and Solas and Fiona are talking quietly about the mages’ role in all this, finalising the last bits. There’s nothing for me to do but wait.

It’s not long before we leave.

The trek to the Breach reminds me of that first day, the uncertainty of what to expect at the end of it. Like that day, I don’t know if I’ll be coming back down. So far every time I’ve gone up this trail, I have had to be _carried_ back down. I’m not sure that’s encouraging.

Dorian is with us, and he walks beside me. He is quiet, which seems unlike him. Even Varric seems quiet, looking above our heads every few steps. I am thankful for their presence.

Sera stayed behind in Haven (said she wanted to be nowhere near the “arsehole of the sky”), but Vivienne came along. I notice she keeps herself distinctly separate from the free mages, and from the looks of annoyance they send her way, they prefer it that way. I _want_ to like the woman, but I’m finding it increasingly hard. If she had her way, I’d be locked up under templar supervision for the rest of my life, probably made Tranquil for offending one.

Such a thing is unthinkable to me. Spending a few days in a cage was enough for me to last a lifetime.

Though at this point, that lifetime could be almost over.

I wish Solas were here, but he is deep in conversation with Fiona.

Part of me expected someone to tell me to lead this trek, and I’m thankful no one did. We are not marching in ranks; it has the feel of a pilgrimage. Whatever I believe doesn’t even matter—closing the Breach is the source of the solemnity.

I catch a glimpse of Leliana ahead, looking up the path. Again I see her as I did in the Fade, young and hopeful, certain she was meant to change the world.

Something tells me she still will, even if she doesn’t believe it herself.

We reach the Breach just before midday. The sun hides itself behind the swirling clouds, and as we wait in the hollowed out shell that remains of the Temple of Sacred Ashes, calm comes over me.

I am not sure I believe in fate. I know I don’t believe in their Maker, or their Andraste. That is moot.

But I feel I am supposed to be here. Or perhaps the other side of that, that this is where I am meant to be at this moment.

I try to remember if I ever felt that way with my clan.

I try to remember Keeper Deshanna’s face. It slips away.

Fiona arranges the mages on the remaining balcony in ranks. Vivienne and Dorian are with them.

Solas is with me. When I happen to glance over at him, he is watching me curiously as if trying to puzzle something out. He looks as if he wants to speak but has waited too long and now he has missed his chance.

I don’t have time to find out what it is he wants to say. There will be time after. I have to believe there will be more time. Cassandra comes our way, Leliana and Cullen close behind them. Josephine is farther back, along with some of the others from Haven, staying out of the way, but here to…witness.

My mark is flaring almost constantly, pulsing. I look to Cassandra and to Solas, who gives me a small nod. I walk forward, the weight of hundreds of eyes on my every move.

“Mages!” Cassandra calls out behind me.

I turn to see Solas raising his staff above his head. “Focus past the Herald! Let her will draw from you!”

I feel them at my back. I walk into the swirls of green energy directly at the Breach’s centre.

There is no looking back now. The mark on my hand is hungry, reaching. The strands within it are ready to grab whatever is in front of them, and one by one, they start taking hold of the dangling threads of the Breach.

A great cry goes up behind me, followed by the sound of hundreds of staves striking the ground. The power of free mages, led by an apostate in the heart of the Chantry’s history. The power of hundreds of them, here to lend it to me. Vivienne. Dorian. Solas.

I am awash in it. It clings to the threads in the mark, forging connections with the strands that snap to attention, finding their targets among those of the Breach, and then it’s happening.

My arm seizes, held above my head. I hold my breath behind gritted teeth as the Breach itself reaches through my arm, through my whole body.

Hours. Seconds. Heartbeats. Years.

I do not know the difference.

I am tethered to the very sky.

A wave of force surges through me, through the Breach, through the mages. I feel it as they are thrown backward with the strength of that force.

It doesn’t push me.

I fall to one knee. My heart is the only sound I hear. The sky—

Then Cassandra is there. The groans of mages getting to their feet join the sounds of the world, and Cassandra helps me to my feet, her eyes alight.

“You did it,” she says.

A wild cheer fills the air, and I look up.

The sky.

The Breach is gone.

I am standing.

I am still staring up at the sky, at the clouds that remain spiraling. Cassandra throws her arms around me, and the moment she lets go, Dorian is there, and Varric, and hands are clapping me on the back. Even Vivienne looks impressed.

I cannot stop looking up.

This time, my own feet will carry me down the mountain.

Solas's eyes find me, and when the barrage of hands and hugs ceases, he takes their place, pulling me close to him.

"Well done," is all he says, and it's all he needs to. When the warmth of his body is gone, the crowd of mages and witnesses sweeps me away, but I can still feel him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wee silly thing, but every time I think "seal the Breach" my brain hears it in Gaston's voice. "We'll seal the Breach!"


	24. One Tear, Fallen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Haven no more.

I look up at the newly-healed sky. The clouds still swirl around the spot where the Breach once was, but there is no wound, no hole.

All around me are sounds of celebration. Music and dancing—Elera is there, dancing arm in arm around Varric’s usual campfire with a girl I hope is the scout she fancies. Adan is clearly already drunk, laughing so hard he spits ale all over the ground in front of him.

Threnn is dancing, too. So is Minaeve. Seeing her happy warms me more than the fire. Seggrit is laughing wildly.

But I am quiet. I feel uneasy. The sky is closed, but the world is now open in front of me, having fulfilled this purpose. The sound of footsteps approaches—Cassandra.

“Solas confirms the heavens are scarred, but calm,” she says.

That should be a relief. Why can I not relax?

“The Breach is sealed. We’ve reports of lingering rifts, and many questions remain, but this was a victory.” She looks at me hopefully, probably concerned by my lack of jubilance. “Word of your heroism has spread.”

“You know how many were involved,” I say softly. “Luck put me at the centre.”

“A strange kind of luck. I’m not sure if we need more or less.”

I crack a smile at that.

Cassandra pauses for a moment. “But you’re right. This was a victory of alliance, one of the few in recent memory. With the Breach closed, that alliance will need new focus.”

I look at her. My heart skips a beat. She still wants my involvement? Beyond simply closing the remaining rifts?

A bell begins to toll in the distance. My throat catches on whatever I was going to say. All thoughts flee my mind with that sound.

Cullen comes running down the hill toward the gate, bellowing, “Forces approaching! To arms!”

No. No, this cannot happen. Not here, not at Haven.

I am armed and armoured still from our journey to the Breach and back. I look around frantically for my companions, for Solas, Dorian, Varric, anyone else. There is confusion and shouting—the dancers scatter below us by the fire. I see Minaeve’s frightened face as she runs.

“What is—” Cassandra gasps. “We must get to the gate, quickly!”

And then Solas is there, and Dorian both. They are also both armed and have their staves with them. Without a word, they fall in with Cassandra and me. I don’t know where Varric is, Sera or Vivienne.

We leap down the stairs, shouldering between frightened folk.

“Go to the Chantry!” I yell to them, and they do.

I feel it in the air, the same dread I felt in that horrible future Redcliffe at the end. Somehow I know who’s coming.

Somehow I know who’s here.

Racing down the stairs to the main gate, we reach Cullen. Cassandra goes to his side immediately.

“Cullen?” she says.

“One watch guard reporting. It’s a massive force, the bulk over the mountain,” Cullen says without emotion, but I see it in his eyes. Fear and rage, warring on his face.

“Under what banner?” Josephine appears from the shadows, alarm written in every line of her body.

“None,” Cullen says shortly.

“ _None_?”

I can’t take my eyes off the gate. A moment later, something slams against it, a flash of torchlight beneath it.

“I can’t come in unless you open!” a strange voice cries desperately.

I move, running to the gate and flinging it wide.

Before me is a hulking…something. A brutish hulk of a Venatori in full heavy plate. I flinch back from it, but it gurgles, a dagger protruding from its throat. It falls to its knees on the ground.

Behind it is a ragged man in an enormous hat, the brim disguising his face. Cullen has run out beside me, his sword drawn.

The strange figure in front of us looks at me, skittishly half-stepping backward at the sight of Cullen’s drawn sword.

“I’m Cole,” he says. It is the voice that called out. “I came to warn you. To help. People are coming to hurt you. You probably already know.”

“What is this?” I ask him. “What’s going on?”

“The templars come to kill you,” he says in a soft voice, a dark voice.

“Templars?” demands Cullen, moving forward again. Cole skitters back. “Is this the Order’s response to our talks with the mages? Attacking blindly?”

Cole comes toward me, closer. “The red templars went to the Elder One. You know him? He knows you. You took his mages. There.”

He points toward a hill not far from where we stand. Two figures stand at the top of it, one almost childishly small compared to the other, but my gut tells me the other figure is only enormously big. Giant.

It’s him.

I feel it without seeing him. My entire body remembers that shape, that figure, too thin, stretched to a height no person can reach, sinews and bared muscle and stitched-together brokenness. Red lyrium glows in the distance, part of his face, part of his body.

The Elder One.

Cullen is murmuring beside me. “I know that man, but this Elder One…”

“He’s _very_ angry that you took his mages,” Cole says.

I can’t react to that. “Cullen, give me a plan. Anything.”

“Haven is no fortress. If we are to withstand this monster, we must control the battle. Get out there and hit that force. Use everything you can.” Cullen backs away, drawing the sword I didn’t see him re-sheathe. “Mages! You! You have sanction to engage them! That is Samson—he will not make it easy.”

The mages are there, they are with us, ready, terrified.

And then Cullen’s voice rings out again.

“Inquisition! With the Herald! For your lives! For all of us!”

Something crunches in my heart at his words. They are rallying. They will fight. I see Minaeve’s frightened face in my mind as she fled to the Chantry.

I will not abandon them.

“Solas! Cassandra! Dorian!” I bellow back toward the gate. They run to meet me.

Already the force is reaching us. Already they are almost at our gates.

We must protect the trebuchet.

I am thankful to these humans and their war machines in this moment.

Dorian throws down a flame glyph at the base of the trebuchet, and Solas and I do the same with ice at our feet. I feel the extra armour it lends me. The cooling certainty steadies me as the first of the red templars crests the rise.

They are…monstrous.

Their faces have red lyrium crystals growing from them. Their shoulders sag with the weight of it, but the first swing of the red templar’s sword cleaves an Inquisition soldier in half.

“Andraste’s flaming bosom,” Dorian curses beside me.

The first death of this battle. I do not know the soldier’s name.

I throw a barrier around Cassandra even as Solas does the same for me and Dorian. The three of us hit the advancing red templars, Solas with ice and Dorian with fire. I alternate between the two, interspersing their heat and cold with pure electricity that crackles and snaps between the enemies.

“Keep them off the trebuchet!” a soldier yells beside me.

Another group is coming up the hill on the opposite side. “Dorian!”

“I see them!”

They are on fire before I can spin. It is grim work.

I feel Dorian’s and Solas’s magic melding with mine, their mana hot and cold, mine wild, straining. Our movements find a rhythm, almost a dance. My staff spins as Dorian’s strikes the earth. Solas and I turn as one, and I remember that day in the Dales, the grass beneath our bare feet.

Indomitable will.

He does not look at me, but I feel our synchronicity, the way our spells almost intermingle before they reach their targets. I never felt this when casting with Keeper Deshanna. Dorian provides a counterpoint, taking our magic and adding his own. Together we keep a barrier on Cassandra at all times, each of us switching off as our mana replenishes.

The trebuchet fires with a great creak of wood and metal, flinging an enormous stone at the advancing army.

“The other trebuchet!” a soldier calls to me. “It isn’t firing!”

“Are you okay here?” I yell.

“Yes, your worship!”

I waste no time, running toward the smithy and past it.

We find why the trebuchet isn’t firing immediately—it is surrounded by red templars. Some of them are short and misshapen, with enormous crystals of red lyrium for hands. The sight is chilling. What has this Elder One done to these people?

I remember Lord Seeker Lucius in Val Royeaux—could he have been involved in such a monstrous thing?

 _You are called to a higher purpose._ The one kind-faced templar. Could he have been made into one of these creatures?

The thought sickens me.

With a scream of rage, I lash out with pure ice and lightning, hurling my spells at the red templars with every bit of fury I can channel.

Cassandra’s war cry is every bit as angry, and I can imagine how she feels in this moment, hear Cullen’s voice again. These were their people, just as the mages are mine.

My people.

To see them corrupted so—I cannot imagine the pain.

They are quickly dead.

“We have time,” Solas says, looking around and scanning for any approaching enemies. “Crew the trebuchet!”

I don’t need to be told twice. I go to the wheel, turning it to aim, and then I stop. If I aim at the forces, it will hit some of them, but my gaze slides to the side of the mountain. It is within range.

If we aim there, the snow—

I turn the wheel the other way. It strains at my muscles, the repetition of turning it over and over and over again.

“More coming our way!” Solas yells.

Glyphs appear around me, buying me more time. I continue working at the trebuchet, Solas’s barrier around me a comfort. They have my back. They have Cassandra’s back.

Soon a flash of flame goes up beside me, and I drop the wheel, grabbing my staff just in time to catch a red templar in the face with my staff blade. Blood spurts. He is on fire from Dorian’s glyph, but he keeps pushing at me, those hideous red crystal arms jabbing at me. This creature has magic. I can feel it, corrupt and sickening, grasping at me.

I strike him with lightning, and he freezes, paralysed for the moment.

Leaping out of his range and to the other side of my own ice glyph, I look to the others.

A massive, hulking shape of pure crystal lumbers toward them. It swirls its hands in front of it, an angry red flicker appearing.

“Get back!” I yell.

They do, and not a moment too soon. Red lyrium erupts in a semicircle around the thing.

“That face,” Cassandra says. “That is Knight-Captain Dennett—how can it be?”

I don’t know. I don’t know.

I immolate the creature that was attacking me, and thankfully, it dies.

“Ice,” I say to myself. I move my ice glyph to the creature’s feet, hoping it will stay in place.

Solas ensures it, freezing the beast with Winter’s Grasp.

It towers over our heads, well over ten feet tall, and it feels like pure rage and pain all at once. It roars, frozen to where it sits.

“The ice hurts it!” I shout. My Winter’s Grasp hits it while Solas’s is still fading, and the creature cries out in pain.

Dorian has no ice spells, but he keeps hitting it with lightning from his staff.

As soon as my ice glyph triggers, the hulking monster crumples forward and dies.

I don’t wait. I return to the trebuchet. It is almost there. Almost ready.

I hear the counterweight clank into place.

I kick the release.

Wind gusts me as the enormous lever flings its weapon toward the mountain.

We all watch. I do not think I am the only one holding my breath.

The ball strikes the mountainside with a puff of snow and a small explosion of orange fire.

For a moment nothing happens, and I almost despair.

But then, farther down the mountain, snow drifts up like smoke. Faster. Wider. It spreads across the face of the slope until it is racing down the steep mountainside, toward the horde of moving torches.

The sound reaches us a few heartbeats later, an enormous roar of falling snow and the punctuating cracks of breaking trees and the clearest music of the night, the shouts and screams of red templars in the distance, snuffed out in an instant by the cascading avalanche.

I hear a cheer from our forces, and for the barest instant, it buoys me.

Then another sound rips through the air. I recognise it an instant too late.

“Get down!” I shout the order as loud as I can, diving away.

That sound. That screech like tearing rock. I’ve heard it before. It echoes through the hole in my memory, but it remains in the memory I have of Redcliffe.

The beat of powerful wings stirs the ground a heartbeat before poison red fire tears through the trebuchet, splintering the strong beams like they are matchsticks.

A dragon. A bloody _dragon_.

The Elder One has a dragon.

 


	25. One Tear, Frozen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Certainty from several sides, and a wild leap into beyond.

We run back toward the gate.

Harritt is attempting to kick down the door of his house, which is on fire. Smoke rises from Haven behind the wall.

No. Not here.

Cassandra smashes through the door for Harritt, and he runs in with a shouted thanks.

“We must get to the gate,” Solas says.

No one disagrees. Harritt is with us in a matter of moments, panting, carrying a pair of hammers.

Cullen is at the gate, seeing that everyone gets inside. “Move it! Move it!”

As soon as we’re in, he slams it behind us.

“We need everyone back to the Chantry,” he says. “It’s the only building that might hold against—that beast.”

We’re already moving up the stairs, and he turns to me, ragged hope falling away. In that moment, my respect for him grows. He has done everything he can to keep our people safe.

“At this point,” he says flatly, “just make them work for it.”

Haven is burning.

Red templars are swarming over the walls, and I hear a cry off to our right. A templar, Lysette. She is back to back with a single Inquisition warrior, surrounded. Fighting her fellows, her former comrades.

“Help her!” I yell.

We join the fight, tearing through the red templars. I see tears wet on Lysette’s face as she bashes one with her shield. Her people.

When they are dead, she turns to run to the Chantry. “Thank you, Lady Herald.”

“Go!” I tell her.

We run up the stairs. There is a shout from a burning house, and more red templars advancing.

“Cassandra!” I point at the house, and she runs.

Dorian and Solas are already jumping into action, alternating their attacks on the trio of monstrous templars running at us.

Wood splinters behind me, and by the time we’ve killed the templars, Cassandra is back.

“Seggrit is safe,” she says. “He was trapped under a beam.”

I nod. I need to make sure to check for other survivors. I don’t seem to need to say it. The others follow me. Above our heads, the dragon flies, back and forth, not attacking yet. Why?

The tavern is ablaze as well. Fire is everywhere. Red templars are everywhere.

“Help!” A voice comes out of the tavern, weak. It ends in coughing.

“That’s Flissa,” I say. “Hold them off!”

I run into the tavern, choking on the smoke. Flissa is on the floor.

“Lady Herald, I knew you would save me,” she says.

I pull a health potion from my belt and put it to her lips. She drinks, and I help her to her feet, kicking aside the boards and remnants of table that fell atop her.

“Get to the Chantry,” I tell her. “Go the back way.”

“Yes, your worship,” she says.

No sooner do I leave the tavern to find a pile of dead enemies and grim-faced friends, but I hear another voice.

Minaeve. I know her voice. Why isn’t she in the Chantry? I told her to go to the Chantry.

I break into a run up the hill toward Solas’s house. There are pots of oil stacked here, and there is so much fire. Minaeve is there, curled against the side of the pallet. She must have been trying to help. Adan is there too, the drunk fool, but when I move to help him, he points to her.

“The girl!” he shouts, half-coughing. “She’s been helping me fight them off—I’d be dead without her.”

I go to her side, pulling her to her feet. Oil must have spilled, because it’s creeping toward the pots from Adan’s house. It’s going to reach him. It’s going to explode.

“Minaeve,” I say. “Can you hear me?”

Her eyes flutter. A blast must have knocked her unconscious, but she flails a bit, trying to get to her feet.

I help her, pull at her.

The others are fighting off more red templars. Holding them off. Keeping them away from me. The fire is getting closer.

I stumble in the direction of the Chantry with Minaeve. “Go,” I tell her. “Can you make it?”

Her eyes are unfocused, but she nods.

An explosion shoves me forward.

“Adan!” I scream his name into the blast of heat.

It is too late. I was too slow.

The pallet of oil is gone. The houses are all ablaze now. I can’t see his body.

Solas comes running around the side of the house, his eyes full of fear. His breath rushes out when he sees me.

“You’re alive,” is all he says, and then Cassandra and Dorian catch us, and we are running to the Chantry.

More templars flood down the side of the hill just beside it. Threnn is running alone into the midst of them, shouting for help.

With an anguished shout, I follow.

This time I don’t go for ice, even if it’s faster to kill them.

They burned Adan.

They will burn.

Threnn is spattered in blood and slightly singed when it’s over, but she is alive.

Cullen is waiting when we run into the Chantry. And to my utter shock, so is Chancellor Roderick. He is wounded, bruises covering his face, and his arm is pressed to his side. He is propping himself up against the door, herding stragglers into the building.

“Move! Keep going!” he shouts. “The Chantry is your shelter!”

The strange young man is there. As I watch, Roderick collapses. Cole catches him.

Cole meets my eyes. “He tried to stop a templar. The blade went deep. He’s going to die.”

Roderick looks sideways at him, coughing. “What a—charming boy.”

Cullen runs up to me. “Herald, our position is not good. That dragon stole back any time you might have earned us.”

“I’ve seen an archdemon,” Cole says. “It was in the Fade, but it looked like that.”

Is he a mage, then? He is tending to Roderick, who is lying on the floor, half-propped against the wall.

“I don’t care what it looks like,” Cullen says flatly. “It’s cut a path for that army. They’ll kill everyone in Haven.”

“The Elder One doesn’t care about the village,” Cole replies as if this is the most obvious thing in the world. “He only wants the Herald.”

Me. Of course. He wants me.

“If it can save these people, he can have me,” I say without thinking.

“It _won’t_ ,” says Cole. “He wants to kill you. No one else matters, but he’ll crush them. Kill them anyway. I don’t like him.”

“You don’t like—ugh.” Cullen throws up his hands. “Herald, there are no tactics to make this survivable. The only thing that slowed them was the avalanche. We could turn the remaining trebuchets, cause one last slide.”

My heart thumps. I glance over my shoulder.

“We’re overrun,” I say to Cullen slowly. “To hit the enemy, we’ll bury Haven.”

“We’re dying,” he says bluntly. “But we can decide how. Many don’t get that choice.”

I feel empty. He’s right. I meet his eyes. In spite of everything scraping its teeth against the people we’ve gathered, cared for, fought for all these weeks, when he looks at me there is something gentle there. Even in the midst of this battle.

In the silence I seek out Solas. The sight of him steadies me.

Suddenly Cole sucks in a breath.

“Yes, that!” Cole looks up, hope in his eyes. “Chancellor Roderick can help. He wants to say it before he dies.”

I look closer at Cole. Mages can’t read minds, not without blood magic. Who is this boy?

“There is a path,” Chancellor Roderick says weakly, but his words hold something more, bigger. “You wouldn’t know it, unless you’d made the summer pilgrimage, as I have. He rises to his feet, painfully, looking to me with pleading in his bruised face. “The people can escape. She must have shown me—Andraste must have shown me, so I could tell you.”

This man once called for my execution to my face. Now he is looking at me with such hope, such desperate hope. I fight back the sudden sting of tears.

“What are you on about, Roderick?” I ask him, but my words hold no venom.

He shifts on his feet, grimacing from the pain in his side. “It was whim I walked the path. I didn’t mean to start. It was overgrown. Now, with so many in the conclave dead, to be the only one who remembers…I don’t know, Herald. If this simple memory can save us, this could be more than mere accident. _You_ could be more.”

I stare at him unblinking. He looks into my face and there is no anger in him at me, no more.

My breath shakes as it enters my lungs. “What about it, Cullen? Will it work?”

“Possibly.” Cullen draws closer to me, concern in his eyes. “If he shows us the path. But what of your escape?”

Silence steals the air.

I look away.

My eyes find Solas. He is not looking at me. For once, no one is looking at me. But then Solas looks up. Sees me. He has the look of someone bracing themself for a blow.

“Perhaps you will surprise it—find a way,” Cullen is saying.

It is another kindness, this lie.

And then he is moving again. “Inquisition! Follow Chancellor Roderick through the Chantry. Move!”

Cole helps the chancellor to his feet, and Roderick holds out his hand.

“Herald,” he says. “If the Inquisition is meant for this—if _you_ are meant for this, I pray for you.”

I cannot answer him. Words will not form.

I don’t want to die.

Solas is there, then, at my side with Cassandra and Dorian. Their faces are tight and drawn. They clearly don’t know what to say either.

Soldiers run to the other trebuchets.

The last thing I hear as we leave the Chantry is Cullen. “Let that thing hear you.”

We fight back through Haven in a blur. It is overrun by red templars. We kill them.

My heartbeat is quicker than normal. It feels like wings, like I could fly away with them.

The dragon soars overhead.

“We need to be noticed?” Dorian says, sounding far too cheerful. “Happens to be a specialty of mine.”

It is the wrong thing to say at the wrong time, but it is the exact right thing. If this is my end, I am thankful for these three with me.

Too soon, we are at the trebuchet.

Cassandra controls the templars who try and swarm us. Dorian and Solas are harmony and counterpoint, their fire and ice singing through the night, drowning out the creak of the wheel under my hands.

With every turn, my fear grows. Why isn’t the dragon attacking? Where is this Elder One?

Here.

The screech of the dragon grates against my ears. It is coming. He is coming.

The trebuchet is ready, but—

Solas and Cassandra and Dorian are still here.

“Move! Now!” I shout to my companions. They have to go. They cannot stay.

But they aren’t moving.

“Solas! Get them out of here!”

He stares at me, and for a moment I think he plans to fight me, to stay, but he must see the memory of Redcliffe in my eyes. He must see that if I am going to die, I am not going to do it with the bodies of my friends at my feet. I cannot watch him die again.

Solas’s face softens for a fraction of a heartbeat, and then he is clapping Cassandra on the shoulder and shouting to Dorian.

And then they are gone, out of sight just as the dragon swoops down upon us, showering the ground with that horrible corrupted flame.

I am thrown to the ground, and it knocks the wind out of me. I gasp for breath.

He is coming. I feel him.

He walks through the flames like they don’t even exist.

He is bigger than I even imagined.

The ground quakes under my feet as his dragon arrives from the other side. It stinks of rot and death. Its body looks like a corpse, and it bellows in my face, so close I can see the spittle on its teeth, glinting in the light of Haven’s destruction.

“Enough!” The Elder One speaks, and I know his voice. “Pretender! You toy with forces beyond your ken. No more.”

He is speaking to me.

 _Slay the elf_.

This is the terror that lives in the hole of my memory. This face. This voice.

I don’t need to remember what happened. I feel it in my marrow, in every part that makes me up.

“What are you?” I demand of him. “Why are you doing this?”

“Mortals beg for truth they cannot have,” he says in a low voice, speaking to me as if I am vermin. “It is beyond what you are, what I was. Know me. Know what you have pretended to be. Exalt the Elder One, the will that is Corypheus. You _will_ kneel.”

“I will not yield!” My voice surprises me, cutting the air between us. This monster calls me a pretender when he behaves as if he is a god, worthy of worship?

“You will resist. You will always resist. It matters not.” He holds up his hand, long, claw-like fingers cradling an orb that flickers green before giving over to crimson and black flames. “I am here for the Anchor. The process of removing it begins now.”

The fire jumps from the orb to my mark, and I convulse as it strikes me. I can taste the corruption, blighted and raw, pushing against the magic in my hand.

“It is your fault, Herald,” he says. The struggle in my hand grows, threads of green fighting the threads of red that appear like veins. “You interrupted a ritual years in the planning, and instead of dying, you stole its purpose. I do not know how you survived, but what marks you as touched, what you flail at rifts, I crafted to assault the very heavens. And you used the Anchor to undo my work. The gall.”

The mark—the Anchor—flares in my palm, threaded with red within the green now. I am forced to my knees in the blood-spattered snow.

“What is this thing meant to do?” If he is going to kill me, let me die with answers.

“It is meant to bring certainty where there is none. For you, the certainty that I would always come for it.”

My mark flares green, brighter, brighter. I can feel the strands within me, electrified and sparking against the red, and they…chase the red away.

Corypheus closes the distance between us, seizing me by my wrist and yanking me off the ground. I dangle helplessly, staring into his face. I am feet off the ground.

And something remarkable happens.

Staring into that face, that grotesquely stitched together mockery of a darkspawn face, I realise I do not fear him anymore. He is flesh, cobbled with lyrium and bone, but he is flesh.

And he has failed to remove my mark. He has failed.

He holds his head high, to better look down his nose at me. “I once breached the veil in the name of another, to serve the old gods of the empire in person. I found only chaos and corruption. Dead whispers. For a thousand years, I was confused. No more. I have gathered the will to return under no name but my own. To champion withered Tevinter and correct this Blighted world.”

My shoulder strains, and my wrist is caught tight in his clawed hand, fingers digging deep into me. I pull my face away from his, turning away.

“Beg that I succeed,” he says, his eyes boring into me as if he can make sense of how this tiny creature he holds with one hand could have gotten in his way. “For I have seen the throne of the gods, and it was empty.”

He throws me through the air.

I strike something hard, hear something crack in my body, and I collapse to the platform of the trebuchet, cradling my aching arm against me. I cannot get my staff from my back.

Corypheus advances toward me. His archdemon stomps toward me.

“The Anchor is permanent. You have spoilt it with your fumbling.” He looks down at me.

A sword lies near me, and I grab for it, wielding it the way Cassandra showed me. Out of the corner of my eye, I see it—a hole in the fortifications. There are tunnels beneath this place.

Wild hope seizes me. Perhaps this is not the end.

“So be it,” says Corypheus. “I will begin again, find another way to give this world the nation and god it requires.”

And above his head, I see it. A flare sent up into the sky.

Cullen made it. He got them out. _He got them out._

The Inquisition and its people have escaped.

I cannot help the smile that curves my lips. Corypheus sees it, but he cannot know its meaning.

“And you,” he says, his cheek twitching in irritation. “I will not suffer even an unknowing rival. You must die.”

The trebuchet is aimed. Loaded.

I see my way out. I brandish the sword in front of me in both hands.

“Your arrogance blinds you,” I tell this Elder One, this Corypheus. “Good to know. If I’m dying, it’s not today.”

I kick out at the release for the trebuchet, and it launches.

Corypheus jerks his head to look, and I run for the hole.

One glance over my shoulder tells me he cannot decide whether to risk the avalanche or not, and he bellows his rage as his dragon swoops him up, deciding for him.

I dive into the hole. I hit what feels like every rock and beam on the way down.

And then the ground.

 

It is quiet when I wake. Too quiet. Cold.

My staff digs into my back. I roll onto my side, groaning. My ribs are broken from the collision with the trebuchet and probably not helped by falling into this hole.

But I am alive.

Triumph lights through me, warming me enough to get to my feet.

The mark flares enough to light the way.

I am in a tunnel, as I thought. The sides have caved in, which jolts me into a moment of fear. I could have been buried, but I wasn’t.

Gingerly, I pick my way forward.

 

Cold.

It is so cold.

I don’t know how long I have been walking or in what direction. I could stumble into Denerim and wouldn’t be surprised.

The tunnel is finally opening up, and ahead of me, I hear a screech, and one I’ve heard before.

A despair demon.

I don’t have time to reach my staff. I fumble it from its loops across my back, and it is stuck. My entire left side screams in agony.

I did not survive Haven just to be killed by a Void-crusted despair demon.

The mark roars ablaze, and the threads pull on the air in front of me in a ball of green light. It forms a cone beneath it, trapping the despair demon and a pair of wraiths.

They can’t escape the rift. The despair demon screams louder.

I flex my hand, feeling what I’ve done. This is new. This is—

The orb. The orb Corypheus used to try and steal back the Anchor. It must have done something, opened something.

I think I could do it again.

I stumble forward as the rift I’ve created dies, and with it, the demons.

I could do it again, but not right away. My hand clenches. I’ve lost my glove.

I tuck my hand under the sash at my waist as I walk.

A breeze stirs the air.

The way out is ahead.

When I reach it, it is far more than a breeze. It’s a gale. Wind roars down the mountain with a blur of snow.

The moment I step to the edge of the tunnel, I regret it.

But the moon is bright, and even though the blizzard obscures my sight, I see something ahead of me. A broken wooden crate, on top of the snow.

They must have come this way.

I take a step into the snow.

 

I can’t stop shivering.

Every piece of wood, every abandoned campfire draws me onward. I stay to the copse of pine trees, hoping it will shelter me from the worst of the wind.

Time means nothing.

My body is freezing. I try and warm myself with magic, but my mana is slow to recover in my exhaustion. I have no lyrium potions.

I stop short in the knee-deep snow, and a foolish sound escapes me.

I have been walking all this way in pain.

I fumble at my belt, pull out a regeneration potion. It is half frozen, but I down it, tucking the vial back empty into its loop at my belt.

It doesn’t warm me, but it helps the pain.

Forward.

 

The snow has stopped.

The sky has cleared.

Only a ripple of green tells me the Breach was ever there. I am moving with no idea of in direction, except to follow the path left by my people.

My people.

Did they all make it? Did Cassandra and Dorian? Did Solas?

The thought of him pushes my feet onward. I am slower now. Moving uphill is worse, even without the bite of the wind. My face is numb, and I cannot feel my hands.

I have never been so cold.

There. Ahead.

A campfire. The snow has melted around it and has not refrozen. When I reach it, it is warm. I almost weep. Recent. Embers.

There is a crest in the path ahead, just between two mountains.

Part of me wants to sit here, to warm my hand.

I move on. One foot, then another. One foot, then another.

When my head reaches over the rise in the hill, there is _light_ before me. A camp. Tents and pack animals and people, spread out before.

One foot, then another. Then—

The mark sputters and flares on my hand.

I fall to my knees. I cannot go further.

“There! It’s her!” Cullen’s voice.

“Oh, thank the Maker!” Cassandra’s.

I cannot go any further.

Hands grasp at my arms, pulling me to my feet, and when I flinch, admonishing voices say I’m probably injured. Their words become a seamless hum.

I can’t seem to make words of my own.

I cannot go any further.

My face is so cold, but the single tear that escapes is hot. It stays beaded on my frozen cheek.

Someone scoops me up.

Cullen.

I cannot go any further.

I don’t have to.

My head falls backward. Feathers tickle at my cheek.

Light fades.

 


	26. Disappearing in Plain Sight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Noticed by everyone, seen by one.

I awake with an aching head, the warmth of someone’s presence beside me. And yelling. Someone is yelling. Or plural someones are yelling. Still.

I turn, rolling over, hoping to see Solas.

But it’s Mother Giselle.

I am glad she made it out of Haven, but my heart gives a pang anyway. Have I seen him since I was rescued? I cannot be sure. There is another hole in my memory, half covered over with impressions of people arguing nearby, the flicker of firelight. Someone singing quietly.

When I struggle to sit up, she reaches out a hand to stop me.

A bronto grumps in the distance over the argument.

“We need a consensus, or we have nothing!” Cullen yells.

I close my eyes again.

“Shh,” Mother Giselle says. “You need rest.”

“They’ve been at it for hours.” My head still feels too big.

I swallow. My tongue is sticky. Opening my eyes again is almost too much work.

“They have that luxury, thanks to you.” Mother Giselle looks over at the advisors, who are still batting words back and forth like the last one to hear something without yelling back will explode. “The enemy could not follow, and with time to doubt, we turn to blame. Infighting may threaten as much as this Corypheus.”

I fight the urge to sigh. My muscles ache with exhaustion, but there is no way I’ll be able to go back to sleep with this twisting in my stomach.

Dimly, I hear Mother Giselle telling me about the escape, but I only half-hear her. Lost in the Frostbacks, somewhere. Corypheus is…somewhere. For now we are safe, but cold and hunger and injuries we can’t treat will be the next big threat. Infighting is not on the same level as those, but it won’t help.

“The only thing yelling will help is making more headaches,” I mutter.

“Another heated voice won’t help,” Mother Giselle says. “Even yours. Perhaps especially yours.”

I manage to manoeuvre myself to a sitting position. Or almost. I lean on one side, wincing. My ribs must have been healed with magic, but they’re still tender.

“Our leaders struggle because of what we survivors witnessed.” Mother Giselle fixes me in her intent gaze. “We saw our defender stand…and fall. And now we have seen her return. The more the enemy is beyond us, the more miraculous your actions appear.”

I swallow again, just as futile as the first attempt. Pushing my hands against the edge of the cot, I sit up, looking away from her. Miraculous is not a word I want attached to me.

She makes it worse.

“The more our trials seem ordained. That is hard to accept, no? What we have been called to endure? What we, perhaps, must come to believe?” She looks out over the camp.

“I escaped the avalanche,” I tell her. “Barely, perhaps, but I didn’t die.”

“Of course,” she says quickly. “And the dead cannot return from across the veil. But the people know what they saw. Or perhaps what they needed to see. The Maker works both in the moment and in how it is remembered. Can we truly know the heavens are _not_ with us?”

Yes. I can. There was no Maker there on that plateau of fire with that monster and his monstrous dragon. I was alone. I felt nothing divine, only desperation. She is trying to force me into—what, exactly? I don’t know, only that I feel like less of a person with every sentence she says further.

Finally I cannot keep it back. It is a tight knot in my chest, and I cannot get rid of it fast enough.

“All of this happened because of fanatics, and arguments about the next world,” I say with more force than I mean. Everything in Haven, everyone going from wanting me dead to awed whispers of my holiness in the space of a day—it comes boiling out. “It’s time we start believing in this one.”

_Who are your people, Ilaana?_

I stand painfully, limping away. The advisors have gone quiet. They sit in frustrated silence around the fire, Josephine and Leliana despondent. Cullen scrubs at his cheek with his hand. Cassandra pores over a map.

“Shadows fall, and hope has fled.” Mother Giselle’s voice rises behind me in song, and I freeze where I stand. When I turn, she is walking toward me, her head bowed. “Steel your heart; the dawn will come. The night is long, and the path is dark. Look to the sky; the dawn will come.”

Behind me, Leliana joins.

I cannot move. I turn to face them, and their faces lift from where they have been staring at the ground. Leliana’s voice is clearer than the finest crystal, and a moment later, Threnn emerges from a tent, singing herself. Cullen’s joins in a resonant tenor.

And then there are people. Soldiers and crafters and pilgrims. Elera, hand in hand with a scout. They are all singing.

They are all singing.

And then they begin to kneel.

The moment stretches on as one by one the survivors of Haven come to kneel at my feet. I cannot move, not an inch in any direction. They are gazing at me with their eyes full of such faith, and there is a storm in my heart.

I am furious at Mother Giselle, for doing this to me, for raising me above them like this. I did nothing so extraordinary. I only survived and—

My anger dies as I realise how much it doesn’t matter.

It doesn’t matter how I feel about it. It is already done.

I grasp wildly within myself to hold onto…something. I am disappearing in plain sight. Ilaana Lavellan is merely a shell for their Herald of Andraste, and who I am is nothing, matters nothing; it is going to slip away from me.

“A word.” A hand catches my arm just as the last notes of the hymn die.

Solas.

I gasp my first breath in I don’t know how long and follow. Each breath is another gasp, and another. He leads me away, out into the snow again, beyond the campfires and the tents and the enormous crushing weight of their faith and expectation.

It is only then that I can breathe.

Solas walks ahead of me, barefoot in the snow the way I ought to be, and with a twist of his hand he kindles veilfire in a brazier stuck into the snow.

It lights his face with blue, and he warms his hands over it. I somehow manage to close that distance to stand beside him.

I am so thankful he came.

It is quiet here, and a moment passes before he speaks.

“The humans have not raised one of our people so high for ages beyond counting,” he says, folding his hands behind him. “Her faith is hard won, lethallin, worthy of pride…save one detail. The threat Corypheus wields? The orb he carried? It is ours.”

For a moment I simply stare at him. How does he know this? The orb. Its magic. I remember as Corypheus tried to wrest my mark from me, how something in the mark knew me, or felt like it. It fought back. He failed.

The curved lines of my palm along which the light flickers in my mark—they match the surface of that orb. I held it. I must have. I held that orb in my hand, and it marked me.

Corypheus said it was permanent. Some part of me has always known that.

“Corypheus used the orb to open the Breach,” Solas goes on. “Unlocking it must have caused the explosion that destroyed the conclave. We must find out how he survived…and we must prepare for their reaction, when they learn the orb is of our people.”

Our people.

The weight of what he’s just said hits me. An elven orb, wielded by a Tevinter magister darkspawn—one of _the_ Tevinter magisters, if he is to be believed—dread creeps into my chest, my stomach.

“All right,” I say to keep myself from throwing up. “What is it, and how do you know about it?”

Some distant part of my mind draws a line between what he said in that horrible future Redcliffe and this moment.

“Such things were foci,” he says, as always giving me that small half smile that tells me he’s pleased I asked a good question. “Said to channel power from our gods. Some were dedicated to specific members of our pantheon. All that remain are references in ruins, and faint visions of memory in the Fade. Echoes of a dead empire.”

I am jolted back to the last night—was it truly only last night?—in the Fade, finding my first memory.

“But however Corypheus came to it, the orb _is_ elven, and with it, he threatens the heart of human faith.” His final words bring me back to what I was thinking moments before.

His eyes are locked on mine.

Everything that just happened in this camp is fragile, so easily broken. I am walking the line between useful mage and a dangerous one. Decent elf and Dalish savage. Subject of their faith and first in line for the headsman’s axe.

The words spill from my lips. “Even if we defeat Corypheus, eventually they’ll find a way to blame elves.”

He nods his acknowledgement.

“I suspect you are correct. It is unfortunate, but we must be above suspicion to be seen as valued allies.” Solas pauses. His blue-grey eyes seem to look into me, inside me. “Faith in you is shaping this moment, but it needs room to grow. By attacking the Inquisition, Corypheus has changed it. Changed _you_.”

I know what he is saying is truth.

He steps closer to me.

“Tomorrow we will break camp. Scout to the north. Be their guide.” He turns to face me, his expression fathomless, beyond my power to decipher. “There is a place that waits for a force to hold it. There is a place where the Inquisition can build, grow.”

He is so close, his eyes on mine. His face is lit by the dancing flames of the veilfire. Reflected in his eyes, I am not simply the Herald of Andraste. I am not even simply Ilaana.

The sky is already beginning to lighten over the mountains. For the first time since I left the tunnels, I know where I am. I have a direction.

“This place,” I say softly. “What is it called?”

His mana and mine flow together again, at this nearness. My skin tingles under the length of his unblinking gaze.

He reaches out a hand to my cheek, only for a fraction of a second, two fingers guiding my face to look to the north.

Solas points in the direction we are to go.

“Skyhold.”

 

When I lie down to sleep, my body knows it’s time. I step into the Fade so easily it’s as if I took a dose of lyrium to do it, which I’ve never done.

For once, the Fade looks so like where we are that for a moment I’m not sure I’m truly dreaming. But the sky is fluctuating green and yellows, and the Black City is visible over the tops of the mountains.

I wander to the north.

There is a pull I can’t explain. Wisps trail along behind me, never intruding, not tonight. I am exhausted, and some part of my mind tells me that if I meet a demon, things could go badly for me, but the Breach is stilled by my hand, and I follow a pulsing draw in the direction Solas indicated.

When I see it, though, I know.

The source of the pull.

 

I wake before dawn feeling more rested than I should. I oversee the early movements of the camp, and then I leave them behind.

I don’t see Solas before I go, but they will all see the trail I leave in the snow.

 

For days we walk, and my mind grows still. At night I dream and wander the Fade, always knowing where I am to go.

Some part of me knows, and I cannot explain how. The magic in my hand, the magic in my heart, some other instinct—I do not know.

All I know is that I am the last to sleep each night and the first to rise each morning, and throughout the day I move on hungry feet ready to find their place of rest.

When the camp catches up to me each night, I listen to their stories of the day. I speak with Elera and Minaeve, Threnn and Seggrit and Harritt, Scout Pellane and Scout Harding. The advisors are quiet. They are all watching me. I go from campfire to campfire each night and sit a while with all of them. I learn about their families, who they lost at Haven, who they left behind at home even before the Breach.

Somewhere on this path, I give myself over to them, at least for now.

They listen to me, too. I tell them of my people and my clan. I tell them of clan Sabrae and gatherings, about the movements of the halla and the hunters.

I do not tell them of my hurts. I tell them instead to heal something in myself.

Somewhere on this path, they look at me and see me.

I am aware always of Solas’s eyes upon me.

 

Every night I find home in the Fade.

Every morning my feet move me closer to it.

My days are solitary. My muscles burn with the exertion of climbing pass after pass and mountain after mountain. My mana feels more open, more mine.

The last night, I set our camp over the rise. At daybreak, I go to Solas, and he follows without a word as I lead him to the crest of the hill.

It is there I first see it with my waking eyes.

Skyhold.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Who needs ASMR videos when this scene exists? Every time it gets me. Every time, Solas's conversation with her gets me.


	27. Skyhold

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The one who has already been leading it.

Skyhold.

My first sight of it is breathtaking.

It steals my breath.

Against the pink sky streaked with gold of a frozen mountain dawn, Solas and I together are the first to lay eyes on it.

A fortress, an empty one, surrounded by nearly-impassable mountains.

It sits atop its own mountain, the space around it carved away over ages by the river far below. From here I can see the tattered banners, a caved-in roof. There will be work to do.

Yet even as it is, it is majestic. How could such a place be _lost_?

The sun rises, touching the ramparts, spilling like pure gold into the valleys below.

Some part of me feels I should know this place. I can feel the magic around me, old and strong and as immovable as the mountains themselves. It feels—it feels like the mark on my hand. Like it knows me. Like it’s waiting for me.

I am stunned by the sight of it. It makes Redcliffe Castle look like a hovel—and not the Redcliffe from that nightmare of a future.

When I turn to look at Solas, disbelief and awe almost certainly plain on my face, he is gazing at me. Not at the view splayed out before us, but at me.

The tips of his ears turn a bit pink, and I don’t think it’s the sunrise.

I gaze back at him for a moment. This moment. This one—I wish I could keep it forever in the truest place in my heart, the wind chasing over the mountaintops around us. His eyes looking at me instead of the spectacular vista all around us. Something has shifted between us. Something has changed. I don’t know what it is.

Making myself look back out over Skyhold, I move forward, almost in a trance, descending.

The Inquisition will follow.

 

It doesn’t take long for the silent fortress to bustle with sound. Survivors from Haven stream through the gates, and I find myself wandering.

The days roll by quickly at the beginning. There is _much_ work to do, and we set about it with a single-mindedness that would put a colony of ants to shame.

The feeling of the survivors is jubilant, and then it is resolved.

We get to work.

Others join us.

On the twelfth day, Cassandra beckons me as I walk amid workers carrying boxes of supplies near the main gate. The other advisors are with her, but they scatter at my approach, which is strange.

She motions to some new arrivals embracing. “They arrive daily from every settlement in the region. Skyhold is becoming a pilgrimage.”

Cassandra begins climbing the stairs up to the main fortress.

“If word has reached these people, it will have reached the Elder One,” she says. “We have the walls and numbers to put up a fight here, but this threat is far beyond the war we anticipated.”

She’s not wrong there. Still, what is she getting at?

We reach the arch under the stairs to the grand hall—well, the hall, anyway, since “grand” is a bit generous in its current state.

Cassandra is still looking forward, walking. “But now we know what allowed you to stand against Corypheus, what drew him to you.”

I hold up my marked hand. “He wanted the Anchor.”

She stops then, meeting my eyes.

“More than that. He came because of who you are, what you did. Your decisions let us heal the sky.” Cassandra is moving again. I follow. “Your determination brought us out of Haven. You are the creature’s rival because of what _you_ did. And we know it. All of us.”

She’s aiming herself up the stairs, so I follow again, wondering what this is about.

At the first landing is Leliana, holding an enormous ceremonial sword with the emblem of the Inquisition in its guard. She looks up at our approach, her eyes bright.

“The Inquisition requires a leader: the one who has _already_ been leading it.” Cassandra stops, turns. Looks to me.

Leliana holds the sword up for me to take.

For the first time I look around. All the bustle in the courtyards has stopped. Everyone has stopped. Cullen and Josephine stand with the people below, all looking up to us where we stand on the stairs.

Every eye is on me. Many faces are smiling.

“You,” Cassandra says at my shoulder.

My heart gives a heavy thud.

Their eyes watching me the whole way through the mountains, their near-silence, their consideration.

Now I know why.

But somehow it feels right.

Even so, I need to ask.

“You’re offering this to an elf?” I turn to face her. “Are you quite sure you know what you’re doing?”

The sun dapples the heart of Skyhold. The mountains guard our flanks. This place—just two weeks ago I would have run from this kind of position, this responsibility, but Skyhold…it feels like this is where I have been headed. That this place is somehow part of me. It has been calling to me.

Cassandra gives me a small smile. “I would be terrified handing this power to anyone, but I believe it is the only way.” She gestures with her nose to the people behind me, spread out below. “They’ll follow you. To them, being an elf shows how far you’ve risen, how it must have been by Andraste’s hand.”

I know she means it as a compliment, but it stings anyway, to hear a human say this. That it takes divine intervention to make an elf worthy of respect, worthy of leading.

It gives me pause. My eyes scan the crowd, looking for familiar faces. I find them among those gathered. Fiona and Elera, Minaeve and others who know this world in a way I don’t, but who share parts of myself. I see Tranquil among them.

None of the leaders of Thedas care about elves. Most care little for mages. Few care for anyone beyond those who can directly benefit them.

“What it means to you, how you lead us: that is for you alone to determine.” Cassandra’s next words echo the thoughts in my mind.

Part of me wants to stand here as an elf, to draw attention to the parts of me that Thedas wants to keep hidden, subservient. Part of me wants to stand here as a mage, a reminder of the hypocrisy of raising me up to serve them when they so often find us wanting.

But beyond that, I am tired. I am both of those things, regardless. And the reason I am here is too complex for such a grand statement.

The Breach is gone, but Corypheus remains, and he will not be restful. Even now he will be working to create the horrors I saw in Redcliffe. I cannot let him succeed.

I take the sword from Leliana.

“This isn’t about a greater message,” I say. “We have an enemy, and we have to stand together. We’ll do what is _right_. The Inquisition will fight for all of us.”

“Wherever you lead us,” Cassandra says, then raises her voice. “Have our people been told?”

“They have!” Josephine calls out from below us. “And soon, the world!”

“Commander, will they follow?” Cassandra turns to face Cullen.

“Inquisition!” Cullen turns in a wide circle. He calls to the gathered throng. “Will you follow?”

They cheer. The noise echoes through the courtyard, resounding off ancient walls, and I _feel_ them. Beyond them I feel more watching from afar, from the Fade. The people here are bright, shining, ready.

“Will you fight?”

Their voices grow louder. The spirits in this place will remember. They will hold this memory, this moment.

“Will we triumph?”

I can hardly hear over the din, but Cullen’s voice raises above it all, as he turns and unsheathes his sword.

“Your leader, your Herald, your Inquisitor!” Cullen raises his sword to the sky, to me.

He stares up at me, dipping his head in approval but holding eye contact. His eyes glow with pride.

Their eyes are all on me, and for once this feels like a choice.

The sword is heavy in my hand.

I thrust it toward the sky.

 

When the chaos of my new title dies down, I go looking for Cole. I haven’t seen him since we arrived at Skyhold, and it seems I’m not the only one who would like to talk to him.

I’m greeted with the sound of Vivienne’s voice and groan inwardly.

“This thing is not a stray puppy you can make into a pet,” she’s saying. “It has no business being here.”

I am very thankful to see a very annoyed Solas beside her with Cassandra.

Even so.

It doesn’t improve from there, since according to Solas, Cole is a spirit.

It thrills me a little, which takes me a moment to put my finger on. I think because I sensed something different about him, but beyond that, I can sense _him_. Vivienne insists on calling him _it_ , on calling him a thing. She doesn’t want Cole to be a person, but I’m not sure that’s for her to decide. He is not something; he is someone. Perhaps it is that I have felt so removed from myself since the conclave, categorised by the people around me as a useful tool or an icon of their faith, seldom seen as a person. Perhaps it’s the conversations I’ve had with Solas. Either way. Something about Cole calls to me.

Solas and I argue on Cole’s behalf—I argue that he helped us, and Solas tries to explain the distinctions between spirits and demons and that Cole isn’t possessing anyone.

Eventually, though, when he appears over by the campfire near the injured soldiers from Haven, he glances at me and I truly do not care what anyone else thinks. I want to hear from Cole.

I say as much, if more politely, and I walk over to him.

He is quiet for a moment, not making eye contact. One of his fingers moves on his hand, a quick movement like a hummingbird’s wings.

“Haven,” Cole says sadly. “So many soldiers fought to protect the pilgrims so they could escape.”

His eyes grow distant, lingering on a prone form across the way. I follow his gaze to the soldier, who is clearly about to die.

“Choking fear, can’t think from the medicine, but the cuts wrack me with every heartbeat,” he says. “Hot white pain, everything burns. I can’t, I can’t, I’m dying…I’m—dead.”

The form is limp. I know Cole is right.

I listen to Cole as he channels the pain of people around us. When he asks to end a life to end a man’s pain, I let him.

“I want to help,” Cole says.

I believe him. “Please stay, Cole,” I tell him.

“I want to stay.” He looks at me from under that enormous hat.

His skin is pale, so pale. Pale like his white-blond hair, pale like the blue of his eyes, like sunlight on snow.

“Roderick was sorry, before he died,” Cole says suddenly.

I go still.

“Did he tell you why he was sorry?” I’m almost afraid to ask.

“Blood, everywhere. Monsters, madness, dying. We’re all dying. The Herald stands against it, and heads turn. Desperate and simple. Pure.” Cole doesn’t make eye contact. He speaks with his arms crossed. “Voices in the Chantry. Years since I’d sung the song and felt it flowing through me. But this is real. _This is real_. So long since I’d felt it. Falling, flying, _faith_. And I fought her. Maker, forgive me. I hope I did enough.”

He is reciting, and my eyes sting suddenly. Roderick is the reason we escaped Haven. Not the Maker. A pompous little man who lingered just to fling barbs at me. A pompous little man who took a templar’s sword to the gut to save ordinary people. A pompous little man who was sorry. He saved us.

“Thank you, Cole. I’m glad you’re here.” My voice is thick with the words.

I have to turn to leave, but Cole’s voice stops me.

“It hurts you. His hurt hurts you.”

“He saved us,” I say simply. “He saved us, and so did you. You helped us live, Cole. I won’t forget it.”

“I _hope_ I helped,” he says, and then I turn to leave.

 

I go for a walk to clear my head, feet finding some of the stairs that haven’t crumbled and climbing them to the battlements. The view below is enough to steal my breath again, and for a time I wander.

There are towers here, mostly in disrepair. I walk into one, where there is a desk with papers and a recently-used candle. Someone has claimed this room.

When I go out the opposite door, I almost run into Cullen.

“Cullen,” I say, not having expected to see anyone.

He seems to have been pacing. He looks exhausted, in spite of the energy he showed in the courtyard barely two hours ago.

“Inquisitor,” he says with a tired smile. He looks out over the mountains. He sighs. It is a heavy sigh, one I can too easily relate to. “We set up as best we could at Haven, but we could never prepare for an archdemon—or whatever it was. With some warning, we might have…”

He trails off.

Surely he cannot think any of this was his fault.

This man kept us alive at Haven. He rallied terrified troops to fight monsters out of legend—some who were alive during the Blight would be facing the worst of their memories come back to life. He rallied _me_ when it seemed certain I wouldn’t survive.

“Cullen, have you slept?” I am surprised by the concern I feel for the man. He has run himself ragged.

“If Corypheus strikes again, we may not be able to withdraw…and I would not want to. We must be ready.” He leans forward on one of the stone outcroppings of the battlements. “Work on Skyhold is underway, guard rotations established. We should have everything on course within the week.”

The wind is cold. It blows my hair into my face.

I don’t know what to say to him, so I decide to listen until he’s finished.

He meets my eyes. His have dark circles beneath him, and from the way he moves, he’s about half a candle mark away from planting himself on his face on the bare rock.

“We will not run from here, Inquisitor,” he says.

“How many were lost?” I ask. My voice is barely audible over the wind.

“Most of our people made it to Skyhold. It could have been much worse.”

That isn’t fully comforting. I should have asked sooner.

“Morale was low, but it’s improved greatly since you’ve accepted the role of Inquisitor.”

“Inquisitor Lavellan,” I say, trying it out. “It sounds odd, don’t you think?”

That gets him to crack a smile, and a glimmer of his humour returns to his eyes. “Not at all.”

“Is that the official response?” Somehow I don’t believe him.

With that, he actually laughs. Or a quiet chuckle, but still. “I suppose it is. But it’s the truth. We needed a leader—you have proven yourself.”

I’ve seen what Cullen is capable of, the way he leads his troops. I don’t think he could have paid me a bigger compliment than that. It gives me a spark of confidence that I didn’t know I was missing.

“Thank you, Cullen,” I say.

He smiles. There is a moment of silence. I remember his parting words to me in the Chantry in Haven, that maybe I would find a way.

“Our escape from Haven…it was close. I’m relieved that you—” What are you _saying_ , Lavellan? “—that so many made it out.”

“As am I,” he says quietly. Then he is silent. Too silent.

I am relieved that he made it out alive—obviously I am, but that sounded like more than I meant. Was it more than I meant? He is so kind, and the way he cares for our people. Our people, there's that phrase again. I am utterly confused.

Oh, Ilaana. _Two of them_? He’s a templar. Oh, Mythal, help me.

Before I can burn myself to a cinder to escape, I feel Cullen’s gaze on me. I turn to flee my own stupid mouth, but the sound of his voice stops me.

“You stayed behind. You could have—” He breaks off suddenly. There is grief in his voice. For me? He continues forcefully. “I will not allow the events of Haven to happen again. You have my word.”

With that, he excuses himself, leaving me alone on the battlements.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I find it really hard to verbalise what I find so affecting about the cutscenes in this section of the game, but I think it's that it fits an archetype of a hero wandering, becoming purified by that wandering, and then being ready to take up their sword. Which is very literally what happens.
> 
> Also, Ilaana is a dum dum and isn't used to people thinking she's worth having a crush on. *looks into camera 2*
> 
> Oh, Cullen. My kingdom for more men like him. For all my diehard Solavellan ship-sailing, they made me love a templar. Probably because he stood up to everything the templars were eventually and then worked his tail off to break them out of their literal dependence to a sociopolitical structure that was using addiction as a leash, but HEY, "rebels against the status quo" is a Type.
> 
> Actually, yeah, no, he and Solas have some stuff in common.


	28. Dreaming Awake

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Find your pack. This and the next are a wee bit fluffy! I had a hankering to show the Inquisitor Really Trying, and this is what fell out.

Skyhold is old.

Beyond old, it is ancient.

The more I dream here, the more I find. It has passed through countless hands throughout the ages, some so far back that there are barely echoes.

I ask Leliana to dig up whatever she can about the place, because what I find in my nighttime explorations amazes me.

I am cautious in these nightly forays. The first time I encounter a demon, though, I have little trouble dispensing with it. I’ve never had much trouble with them, but I couldn’t say if that is normal. Part of me wonders if Circle mages have so much trouble because of the fear that is drummed into them—a self-fulfilling prophecy where their own expectations shape the inhabitants of the Fade to reflect the monstrous apparitions they are warned so thoroughly it holds.

The spirits are more curious, venturing closer as if as curious about me as the wisps. None speak to me, but I am aware of them.

I know I ought to speak to Solas about this, but it feels new and it feels like mine, and while he showed me it was possible to open the door, I am the one who walked through it.

Skyhold has much to explore, by day and by night.

 

I leave only once in those first few weeks—there is so much to do, and it’s the peak of winter. Satinalia is coming.

My plan to recruit the horsemaster in the Hinterlands has been delayed by the attack on Haven, but we are want to complete one thing he asked. Or rather, his wife asked.

With the holiday swiftly approaching, I’ve been searching about for gifts for the people in the Inquisition and failing miserably. Satinalia seems like such a day of jubilance that with all of them looking forward to it so much, I want to be able to show them I appreciate them, even if I’ve never celebrated their holiday.

Turns out, finding gifts for a bunch of people you’ve only known for a few months is not easy. After wracking my brain and getting nowhere, going to the Hinterlands to solve someone else’s problem feels like a gift to _me_.

So I venture out with Solas, Cole, and Cassandra to Redcliffe Farms to track down the wolves that had been plaguing the farmers.

I’ve never had to fight wolves before, and I don’t like it. They are persistent, furious. They snarl as they fight, but they do not defend each other or themselves. They only attack with teeth and claws as if it’s the only thing that can give them relief.

When they are dead, it leaves me sad.

“No normal wolf would fight with such determination,” Cassandra says after our first fight with them.

“The Breach may have driven them mad…or perhaps a demon took command of the pack.” Solas looks at the wolves’ corpses with no small bit of sadness, which Cole notices.

The pale spirit cocks his head at Solas.

“Do you know a lot about wolves?” Cole asks.

I perk up my ears, wondering what Solas will say.

“I know that they are intelligent, practical creatures that small-minded fools think of as terrible beasts.”

I can’t resist looking at him, wondering truly if he saw me give that wolf statuette to the boy in Val Royeaux. He doesn’t seem to notice my gaze. He hasn’t mentioned the lad to me.

The wolves turn out to be under the influence of a demon, to exactly no one’s surprise, and while the cave they were dwelling in held mostly natural resources, I do come across an amulet. A magical one, from my immediate first impression.

The amulet I found has a name, once I dig around a little after our return to Skyhold. Token of the Packmaster. I wear it at first, and I do a few simple tests in the valleys around Skyhold to discover that when wearing it, wolves do not attack. It also lowers the defences of one’s opponent, sundering their armour a little. It’s not anything spectacular, but I like it. It is a simple thing, a medallion of serpentstone with a silhouette of a wolf engraved in its face.

I don’t know for certain if Solas will like it or if he will think it’s silly, but since Satinalia seems so important to the humans here, I want to include everyone in my gift-hunt.

Returning to Skyhold, thankfully, inspires me.

For Cassandra I arrange a new practice dummy made of sturdier stuff than the ones she usually beats to a pulp. If nothing else, she can feel a greater sense of accomplishment for destroying it.

Sera is getting the bees she asked for, though it is very hard to keep a straight face when I ask Cullen to make sure it happens in time for Satinalia. Cullen himself—I was stuck on his gift, but I stumble across a beautiful chess set in the endless cellars of Skyhold, and I’ve heard him talk about missing the game.

Vivienne is getting a bottle of very old wine, also from the endless cellars. I have no idea if she’ll like it. It _looks_ expensive, and Josephine makes an interested-enough noise when I show it to her that I regret not planning to give it to her instead. And since I heard Scout Harding complaining to Scout Pellane about her boots wearing out, I ask Harritt to fashion her a new pair. She’ll probably wear those out too.

Gift giving among the Dalish is not something that usually takes this much planning, probably because we have limited access to merchants and more limited access to coin, so our gifts tend to be small, meaningful things we make ourselves.

I’m a half-decent whittler, so the gifts I gave over the years tended to be things I carved. After days of banging my head against the wall of what on earth people want, the idea isn’t a bad one.

I turn to what I know for the remainder of the gifts the night before Satinalia, when after a few long war council meetings, I’m set free and left to my own devices.

The new Inquisition quartermaster, Ser Morris, is a bit flummoxed when I ask for some bits of unused wood and carving tools, but he presents me with an entire crate of various types—including some ends of rare sylvanwood—and a sturdy roll of woodworking tools, and it makes me happier than I care to admit.

The fortress is quiet for the night, with everyone preparing for tomorrow’s holiday, so I manage to escape to my room alone. It’s a temporary space, spare and undecorated other than my low bed and a rickety desk, but it’s in a quieter part of Skyhold, and today that is what I want.

I sit for a long time considering Dorian’s gift. I don’t want to give him something that reminds him of Redcliffe, but for ages that’s all I can think about. After days of mulling over it, I fashion him an hourglass, all of wood.

Josephine has told me that her family used to be merchants, so I carve her a ship, but what I’m most proud of is Leliana’s. For her I carve a halla and a nightingale, the nightingale the same size as the halla, their necks resting affectionately against one another. I don’t know how long it’s been since she last saw Neria, but I hope she will like it. I use the sylvanwood for that, and it feels strange under my fingers after so long without handling any.

A piece of beautifully grained oak catches my eye when I am sitting and pondering my handiwork. It’s been so long since my fingers itched to carve anything that I give in. Perhaps it’s that I’m thinking about the Amulet of the Packmaster as I start drawing bits away from the piece, or perhaps it’s what I said to the young man in Orlais, but as it starts to take shape, it becomes two wolves. They circle one another, looking over each other’s shoulders as if protecting from attack. Their tails are held high.

I’m putting on the finishing touches and absolutely covered in wood shavings when someone knocks on my door.

“Come in!” I consider brushing the shavings off of my lap, but think better of it, since it will just make more of a mess.

Solas enters, leaving the door ajar behind him. He stops when he sees me, and it’s clear I’ve gone and surprised him again. The corner of his mouth twitches into an amused smile.

“I didn’t know you carved,” he says.

“Not as well as some,” I tell him, sheepishly motioning to the hourglass, halla and raven, and ship perched on the edge of my desk.

I know he paints—he’s asked for and been granted permission to create a full-sized fresco in the rotunda, where he is to be found most of the time. He’s barely started, but what’s there is already stunning and surreal. Surreal because it depicts the Inquisition, and therefore me.

But my little carvings are nothing compared to that.

Still, he walks over and picks up the halla and raven, turning it over in his hands.

“This is beautiful, lethallin,” he says.

“Thank you. It’s for Leliana. Did you know she and the Hero of Ferelden are lovers?” As soon as it’s out of my mouth, I wish I could take it back. Maybe that’s not common knowledge, and I’m gossiping.

“I did,” Solas says simply. “Leliana will be delighted to receive such a lovely gift. Are you doing these for Satinalia?”

I nod, still a bit embarrassed. “I’ve never celebrated it. It seems important to them.”

His gaze falls to the piece in my lap. “May I?”

I hand it to him, and my fingers brush his. It clearly has nowhere near the same effect on him as it does on me, because my hand immediately becomes warm like I’ve stuck it over a candle flame.

“I have something for you, too. I was going to give it to you tomorrow, but since you’re here, if you’d like it now—” I’m flustered, and I’m almost certain it shows.

“You got me a gift?” He looks pleasantly surprised.

Does Solas think I would find something for everyone but him?

“Of course,” I say, bemused. “I wasn’t going to leave anyone out.”

“You got something for everyone in the Inquisition?”

“Well. No. But you’re not everyone in the Inquisition.” I make myself meet his eyes, and they are unreadable. “I found or made something for everyone in the…inner circle, I suppose. The advisors and everyone who fights at my side. And Scout Harding.”

Because it’s something to do besides ramble at him, I stand up, dropping the wood shavings all over the floor after all. I go over to my bed, where I’ve stashed a satchel of personal items. I pull out the Token of the Packmaster.

“I found this when we were in the Hinterlands,” I tell him. “It’s serpentstone, like the story I told you from when I was a child, and I thought of you when I found it because of what you said to Cole about wolves. Wolves won’t attack you when you wear it, and those enemies who do attack you will feel your bite, so to speak.”

He reaches out to take the amulet in careful hands. I’ve put it on a silverite chain, since its original chain was broken. My eyes fall to his wolf jawbone, and suddenly I feel foolish. He already wears something around his neck.

“It’s—” I begin.

“It’s perfect,” he interrupts. “Thank you, Ilaana. Both for the amulet and for the thought behind it.”

Solas is still holding the wolves in one hand and the Token of the Packmaster in the other, which is rather funny, or would be if my heart weren’t trying to escape out of my throat. I don’t trust myself to tell him the name of the amulet without getting so nervous I break out in inappropriate and hysterical laughter.

“May I?” I ask instead, motioning at the amulet. If he doesn’t want to put it on, he can say so.

He smiles. “Of course. I will sit, to make it easier.”

Solas sits in the chair I’ve vacated, the wolves on one knee.

My fingers are cold from carving in a rapidly-cooling room—I’ve let my fire die—and the prickles of electricity from our proximity do not help my dexterity.

I’m thirty years old. Creators, why do I feel like I’m barely thirteen? If I’d remained with my clan, I would be Keeper soon.

That thought does not steady my hands.

It takes me a few tries to get the clasp open, but I finally manage, letting my arms fall around his neck with one end of the chain in each hand. For a moment I imagine what it would be like to let them fall all the way to his shoulders here, to wrap around his chest.

But that is a terrible thought to have just now. I almost drop the amulet.

My fingers brush the back of his neck when I fasten it, and his skin immediately pebbles into gooseflesh.

“Cold hands, I’m sorry,” I say, letting the chain drop.

“It’s quite all right.”

I move to face him. The serpentstone is a beautiful blue-green that catches the light from the candles. It sits just below the hollow in his throat, and he tucks it under his shirt.

He’ll probably take it off as soon as he’s back in his own quarters, but for now I like knowing he’s put it next to his skin.

“Who is this for?” Solas asks, picking up the wolves from his knee. “It’s beautifully done. The wood grain makes them look as if they’re moving.”

“Oh,” I say. “I hadn’t made it for anyone, really. I saw the piece of oak in the crate and thought I would see what came of it.”

“Ah,” he says. He is still holding it, eyes studying it.

“You should take it,” I say abruptly. “I’d rather see it with someone who would value it than have it sit somewhere only my eyes will see it.”

“But you will have given me two gifts, and I have nothing to give you in return.” Solas tries to hand the carving back to me.

“Solas.” I say his name softly, but he stops mid-movement. “You have given me gifts I will never be able to repay. This is a small thing compared to…everything else. Please, I insist. Unless you were just being polite in saying that it’s nice, because in that case I wouldn’t want you to be stuck with it.”

He chuckles at that, rising from his chair. “In that case, I will be selfish and take it, because I was only telling the truth. It is a beautiful carving. It can live on my table in the rotunda, where anyone who wanders past can see it. It has been a very long time since anyone gave me a gift, let alone two. Thank you, for both.”

Oh, no. Or yes. This is both marvellous and terrifying.

“Did you need something?” I ask him. “I should have asked earlier why you came by instead of pelting you with wolves.”

His peal of laughter startles me. I don’t know that I’ve ever heard him really laugh. It sounds—impossibly—like the first laugh in a thousand years. He comes by his Varric-given nickname very honestly and chuckles often, but this is the first time he’s ever outright laughed. I give him a confused, crooked smile in return, unsure of what’s funny, but I desperately want to hear him laugh again.

Though his grin is almost as big.

“I completely forgot why I came,” he says, grinning widely at me. “But if I remember, I’ll be sure to find you tomorrow.”

He leaves, holding the carving with care and wearing a smile.

It’s only then I start to wonder if perhaps I dreamed his visit, and if I ought to expect to wake up. He is in such a good mood, and while he is usually in a fine temper, I still have no idea what was so funny. The only thing I feel confident about is that he wasn’t laughing _at_ me.

But not long after, Josephine comes to fetch me for a dinner and diplomacy date, and as fond as I am of her (and as quickly as I scurry to hide her gift from her view), I am most definitely not asleep and dreaming for that.

The great hall is decorated in garlands, and sparkles of golden light flicker in the air, which must be a spell one of our mage allies created. It makes the hall look as if it is in the depths of the starry sky. I almost can’t listen to Josephine for the whole of dinner.

And later, when I pass through the rotunda on my way back to my room after checking in with Leliana, Solas isn’t there, but my carving of the wolves is right in the middle of his table, just beyond his stacks of books and papers, where he will certainly see it whenever he sits down in his chair.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh gods, I agonised over this so much. Her relationship with Solas is this ever-spinning cascade of rings that neither of them can really name.


	29. Satinalia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> *SPARKLE EYES*
> 
> You get a present, and YOU get a present, and YOU get a present, and fenedhis, Ilaana, howm'st the fuck did you forget Varric??

The morning of Satinalia dawns, and fluffy snowflakes are falling over Skyhold.

When I emerge from my room, laden with a basket of parcels I wrapped in bits of cloth and ribbon, the excitement in the air is palpable. Everyone I pass is smiling, and even though I have little idea of what to expect (Leliana’s mysterious smile and assurance that it is a day to lose one’s inhibitions and be very merry tells me not much), their giddiness is contagious. Cole flits from person to person, effervescent with reflected joy.

I thought long and hard about what to give Cole, but when he appears by my side, he actually meets my gaze for once.

“Wolves, circling, singing. She doesn’t know, but it feels like mine. You pressed your palms to a long lost pain, and something glows there now, like you in him,” Cole says with wide eyes that show me my startled self through his awe. “He keeps it where he can always see it. Enaste, da’lath’in.”

Cole is gone as quickly as he appeared. The sparkles in the air live in my skin.

I don’t know what the custom is for gift giving, but I do know it’s not the only focus of the day—that will be the feast, if I remember correctly. And lots of booze.

But it is a chance for me to seek everyone out. There is still scaffolding throughout the hall, but it’s been decorated with evergreen boughs and mage-created sparkling lights to look as if it belongs permanently. Vivienne is on the balcony, looking down over everyone and everything as if ruling from on high. I am not surprised of her choice of space.

She gives me a waggle of her fingers as a wave, so I take the stairs up to her first.

“Good morning, dear,” she says. She is resplendent in white and gold robes that flare around her neck like a gilded lily, and her close-cropped hair and deep brown skin are striking. “Your pet seems happy today.”

“I brought you a small gift for the day,” I tell her, ignoring the dig at Cole. I place my basket on the floor in front of me and pull out her wine.

“Oh, darling, you shouldn’t have,” she says, amusement lighting her face. But she opens the parcel, pulling the bow on the ribbon to reveal the wine, and she makes the same startled gasp Josephine did. “Wherever did you find this? Hasmal vineyard, and from the Blessed Age? My, Inquisitor, such a lovely gift. Thank you, dear.”

“I’m pleased that you like it,” I say, unsure if she is serious or not. Her smile looks genuine enough, though.

“I shall have to save it for a special occasion,” Vivienne says, placing it on a small table near a chaise lounge she had delivered from her lover’s estate.

I think that means she hates it.

I excuse myself under the pretence of many other gifts to deliver.

Cassandra’s is already in her usual training spot, but I stayed up late to sneak out and tie a bow around it, and she’s already out there when I get there.

“Inquisitor,” she says. “Why is there a bow on this new dummy?”

“My gift to you,” I tell her, trying to suppress my grin at her expression as she scrutinises the dummy. “For Satinalia. I considered asking Solas to paint my face on it, but I decided that might not be appropriate.”

“For me?” She tears her gaze away from the dummy, looking suddenly bashful. Cassandra? _Bashful_? There is definitely a pinkish hue to her cheeks. “There was no need for you to get me a gift, Inquisitor.”

“I wanted to,” I tell her. “Besides, it should hold up better than the other ones you usually murder.”

She laughs at that, but after a moment, she frowns. “But your people do not celebrate Satinalia.”

“Yours do,” I tell her.

I leave her staring at her new dummy.

Sera is already drinking with Scout Harding when I find her, which may be for the better but also may mean the great hall will be filled with bees sometime this evening--she is so excited about the bees that I almost can’t wait to see her throw them at someone. I tell Scout Harding about her boots, which should be ready for her to retrieve, and she’s so startled to be included that she turns bright red and splutters a thank you.

They make me have a drink with them, and without breakfast, that is probably not my best idea of the day. It tastes like apples and honey, and while Sera insists that means it can qualify as breakfast, I’m not sure. My nose is warm and tingly by the bottom of the cup.

My next stop is Cullen, who is working, because of course he is.

“Commander,” I say when I open the door, and he doesn’t look up.

His curls are rumpled, which I’m starting to recognise as a sign of his focus. He doesn’t seem to notice that he toys with them when he’s concentrating hard on something else.

“Commander, what are you doing?”

“Inquisitor!” He gets halfway to his feet and hits his knees on the underside of his desk. “The celebrations don’t start until this evening.”

“Actually, they start now.” My mood is improving with every new face I see, or perhaps it’s just that I am a little tipsy.

I might be a little tipsy.

I put my basket on the floor and pull out the chess set. I wrapped it in Dales loden wool and tied it with a bit of leather, and when I hand it to him, he takes it apprehensively, like he’s expecting that I gift wrapped Sera’s bees.

“This wasn’t necessary,” he says softly.

“That’s the entire point of a gift,” I tell him. “Open it, Cullen.”

He tugs on the leather and folds back the wool. The box is beautiful, inset with abalone shell and dragonbone and some stone I can’t identify, and the pieces are meticulously carved.

“This is—” Cullen stares at it. “This is a stunning gift, Inquisitor.”

“Please, Cullen, _Ilaana_ is more than fine. Especially today.” I don’t want to be the Inquisitor today. Just for today I want to be me. “I heard you say you missed playing, and I stumbled across this in the library. I thought it would suit you.”

“It would suit a king, Inqu—Ilaana. Thank you.” He is at least the third person to blush because I gave him a gift.

“I hope you get a lot of time to enjoy it,” I tell him. “I hear Dorian plays. You ought to challenge him.”

“I’ll do that, as long as you promise me a game at some point.” For the first time since I’ve met him, I think Cullen’s eyes are actually twinkling.

“It’s a deal, but you have to stop working today, or all bets are off. Go find Dorian. Wait a few minutes, because I have to give him his present first.”

With that, I pick up my basket and leave, crossing the stone bridge back to the rotunda, which deposits me right next to Solas. A glint of silverite is visible against his skin.

He didn’t take off the amulet.

A warm glow spreads through me, and it’s not the alcohol. At least not mostly.

“Hello,” he says. I love the way he says that word. Such a normal word, but the gentleness of his voice makes it music.

“Hello,” I say hastily. I am beginning to suspect that the drink Sera gave me was stronger than she let on.

“I am told you are the source of some impressive delight already today.” Solas nods to my basket. “Cole is almost giddy. I also took precautions to make sure Sera’s bees are unavailable to make an appearance at the festivities.”

I almost drop my basket. “That is…most likely a very wise decision.”

“I try to use the wisdom of the Fade to its fullest extent,” he says seriously, but his eyes are twinkling too.

Apparently Satinalia is having a rosy effect on everyone, whether they celebrate it traditionally or not.

“Will you be joining us at the feast?” I ask, trying not to sound too hopeful.

“Certainly. It seems too exciting to miss, especially if the Inquisitor is already drunk.”

I wince. “Sera,” I tell him. “Is it so obvious?”

“Only if you continue to call me Sera.”

It takes me too long to realise that’s a joke. “Solas.”

“You got it right that time.”

“I’m leaving.” But I have to walk right past him, and his smirk is impossible to ignore. “Solas!”

“Twice in a row!”

Oh, Creators. I flee upstairs, which isn’t much of an escape, because Dorian is right above our heads, and he’s laughing at me before I even get to him. He _would_ have heard everything.

“Let’s see if you know my name,” he says.

“Oh, the Dread Wolf take you, Dorian,” I say, but my own helpless giggle blends with Solas’s sudden burst of outright laughter from below, and even Grand Enchanter Fiona is trying to hide a smile where she stands at a shelf not far away. I may not have gotten her a gift, but perhaps getting to watch me make an arse of myself is priceless enough. Is _every_ elf in Skyhold laughing at me today?

“Promises, promises,” says Dorian. “Is there something in that basket for me?”

That sobers me, because I did put a lot of thought into his gift. I lean the basket on my hip and hand it to him.

My Tevinter friend unwraps it with a flutter of his fingers, examining the wooden hourglass with a small frown.

“You hate it,” I blurt. “I made it. I’m sorry.”

“My dear Ilaana,” says Dorian. “To the contrary.”

To my surprise, when he looks up, his eyes are shining, and he doesn’t even try to hide it.

“You gave me back something priceless,” I tell him. “Time.”

“Yes, I am quite clear on the metaphor here. Please tell me you’ll let me hug you, or at least find me a handkerchief.”

I drop my basket and throw my arms around him. I’ve managed to startle him. For a moment he doesn’t even react.

“Thank you, for Redcliffe. And for staying.”

He wraps me in a solid embrace, and it’s only then I realise how hungry I am for closeness. When was the last time someone touched me just because they care, apart from Solas right after Redcliffe? Even though my clan was mostly aloof at best, there were constant casual touches between me and Keeper Deshanna. We sat close together when we worked. When it rained and we needed shelter, we would all sit snug and warm together in our aravels. Since I left for the conclave, the most physical contact I’ve had with anyone is this hug, Solas’s comfort, Cullen carrying me down the mountain to the camp (which I barely remember). And Corypheus dangling by my wrist, which is hardly a pleasant memory.

And of course Solas, sitting beside me while I slept, poking at the Anchor, which I don’t remember at all.

Two real hugs in the months since I arrived, and I’m coming to pieces.

I cling to Dorian a little too long.

When I pull back, both of our eyes are wet.

“Right,” Dorian says, pretending he’s not crying. “We need to get you drunker.”

“It’s not even midday!”

“My darling, it’s Satinalia.”

There are still gifts I need to give people. Namely, Leliana and Josephine.

And Varric. Oh…shit.

I forgot Varric.

How do humans _do_ this?

“You look like you just stepped on my kitten,” says Dorian.

“Is that a euphemism for some human thing?” I ask.

Dorian laughs again, and so does Solas, and Grand Enchanter Fiona loses the battle she was fighting against the smile twitching on her face.

I am glad I can’t see my own face. It’s probably redder than Corypheus’s, and his is half lyrium.

“I forgot Varric’s present,” I whisper to Dorian, too loudly.

“Dorian to the rescue, then,” Dorian whispers back, also too loudly. “We’ll tell him Cassandra reads his books.”

“Cassandra reads _his books_?” I forget to whisper. What in June’s name did Sera give me to drink?

Then again, I haven’t eaten.

“She lent me one…of his _Swords and Shields_ series.”

“Oh, my. That’s the romance. He hates that one! _Cassandra_?” The world is spinning. I can’t be that drunk.

Dorian nods, slow and evil.

He’s right. This is the best present we could give Varric.

I don’t think I’m in the right state of mind to give Leliana a serious present. She’s usually just upstairs from here. I look up.

“Leliana?” I call out.

“Yes, Inquisitor?” Oh, no. She’s obviously smiling, even though I can’t see her, I can hear the smile. Hear it.

“I have a present for you, but you should wait until I’m sober to open it.”

“Of course, Inquisitor. Sometime next week, then?”

I deserved that. “It’s Sera’s fault!”

“Ah, you’ve forgotten my name again,” comes Solas’s voice from below.

“If you’re taking credit for our dear leader’s drunken state, perhaps you should join us to make it worse?” Dorian leans over the rail of the rotunda.

I lean the opposite way. What have I done to deserve this?

“Of course,” Solas says from the stairs. That smirk. I can hear that too.

“Someone feed me first,” is all I say.

 

By nightfall, Skyhold is full of masked people and light and laughter. The hall is sparkling with thousands of tiny golden lights, and the entire Inquisition is…very drunk.

Naturally, I’ve mostly sobered up. Mostly. Compared to Dorian, anyway. He more than caught up. It’s been long enough since I drank more than a cup or two of the cider my clan brewed when apples were in season, and sometimes a bit of brandy bought from a merchant.

Besides, I think the best gift I managed to give my people today was my own foolishness. No one else seems to have gotten others gifts—I must have remembered wrong.

Either way, though, when I pull up a chair next to the wall, leaning back to watch Cullen beating drunk Dorian soundly at chess and Varric teasing Cassandra with Sera’s gleeful help, I am surprisingly content. I’ve never had this.

Cole is beside me.

“You helped them,” he says, delighted. “Healed hurts you didn’t know they had, water lapping from a cool clear lake, and you can’t even hear them.”

“I hope you’re right, Cole. I wish I had something more for you.”

“You do.” He is sitting on the edge of the table, his feet swinging. “I get to see you brighter.”

Even though they’re all in masks, some simple, some—like Vivienne’s massively plumed snowy owl mask—elaborate, there’s no mistaking any of them. I’m one of the only people unmasked, me and Cole.

Josephine loved her ship, and Leliana most definitely went against what I told her and opened her gift in the middle of the feast. For a moment I thought she was going to cry, looking at the halla and nightingale together, but she didn’t. Her eyes sought me out, and I was thankfully sober enough by then that I didn’t embarrass myself further.

“Well done, lethallin,” Solas says quietly from my side, making me jump. “Your title hides who you are from most people’s eyes, but today it was you who outshone your role as Inquisitor.”

The compliment is unexpected and so close to things I have felt myself that I am without a response for several seconds.

“Brighter now, too,” Cole says. “Glowing, gleaming in the light you make. It hurts less when the light is more.”

I glance at Cole, and he looks happy, excited. He is having a beautiful day. If I could be half so happy as this spirit of Compassion is for the joy of others, I might truly glow.

“You’re right, as usual, Cole,” I tell him softly, though I’m not sure if his _you_ was singular or plural. When Cole vanishes a moment later, I turn to Solas. “Thank you. I’m glad they’re happy today. Haven was…”

I don’t need to tell him how Haven was.

When I turn to look up at him, I see the Token of the Packmaster over his shirt, where anyone can see it. The wolf jawbone is still there, too. He, like me, is not wearing a mask.

He pulls up a chair to sit beside me, his eyes on Dorian and Cullen. Cullen looks over with that half-smile of his.

“The commander thinks a great deal of you,” Solas says. “He is someone whose respect is not easily won.”

“Yes, he has been kind to me,” I say slowly. “Much as you have.”

But he is a templar. Something in that fact terrifies me, in spite of his kindness.

A raucous laugh goes up across the room.

“As much as I like them, I am never certain how much I can truly relax with them,” I murmur. “Any of them. Or at least not yet.”

“Them?” The question is neutral, but my mouth goes dry anyway.

He is sitting close enough for me to feel his body heat.

“You understand,” is all I say.

Solas nods. He does understand. There are a million things I have to remember whenever I am the Inquisitor, which is almost always. With Solas I can just be, whatever that happens to mean for me.

He looks like he wants to ask something, but an instant too late I notice that the others have gathered, and they are all wearing mischievous smiles and looking over at me with far too much conspiratorial drunk people stealth.

Which is to say, they are staring at me and being very obvious about it.

“Inqui—Ilaana,” Cullen calls out.

“Inquisilaana,” Sera titters, her arm slung around Varric’s neck.

Leliana, who is the most sober-seeming of all of them, walks toward me, beckoning.

I glance over my shoulder at Solas. “Do you know what this is about?”

“Perhaps,” he says. He nods in their direction. “You should go find out.”

Oh.

“It is not a gift, Inquisitor,” Cassandra says, “but the timing makes it look like one.”

Leliana loops an arm through mine and leads me to the far end of the hall, toward the door opposite the smithy.

“We know you are comfortable where you are, but we thought you might like to be more comfortable,” Leliana says. “Josie?”

“I beg your pardon, Inquisitor,” Josie says, and before I can turn, she slips a blindfold over my eyes.

“Everyone needs to stop calling me that, at least for today,” I mutter. The blindfold is a bit crooked, but all I can see is a sliver of candlelight.

“Of course, Pouncer,” says Cassandra’s voice.

“I walked right into that one.”

Cassandra must be drunk enough not to be angry at me and Dorian for telling Varric her secret—and drunk enough to use Varric’s nickname for me.

Cassandra must be very drunk.

“She is going to walk into a wall if you’re not careful, Leliana!” Cullen’s voice.

Another arm slips through mine, and feathers tickle my face, but they’re far too wide to be Cullen’s. The person wearing them smells of vanilla. Vivienne?

“Mind the stairs, Ilaana,” Vivienne says from my right side.

From the sound—something like a small herd of brontos on wooden planks—everyone is following. Up endless stairs. I must still be drunk myself, because they go on forever.

Finally, a cold breeze stirs on my face, and Leliana and Vivienne walk me a little further and then stop me.

“It is only fitting that our leader have quarters befitting her station,” says Vivienne. “We all tried to make them feel like home for you.”

I am fairly certain Vivienne doesn’t even like me or know what home might feel like for me (since I certainly don’t know that myself), but she sounds earnest.

Maybe she doesn’t hate me.

Wait, quarters?

“Keep your eyes closed,” Leliana says, and I close them just in time for someone to remove the blindfold.

“You can look now,” Cassandra tells me.

I open my eyes.

The first thing I see are the windows. They are a Dalish design, trees and pale greens and blues and purples. They sparkle in the firelight and candlelight, which wash the room in gold.

The rug in the middle of the floor bears the Inquisition’s heraldry, but that is the only hint in the room of who it belongs to. The bed is wide and covered in warm furs. The windows—and doors to _balconies_ —are open. Someone noticed I like to sleep with the window open, warm under my coverlets.

There is a desk with papers and books for me, and a chaise lounge that has to be Vivienne’s work.

There is a balcony inside, too, and—

I spin to find Solas. So this is where he’s been when he’s been missing from his own painting in the rotunda. He meets my eyes with a soft hint of a smile.

The wall behind the inside balcony rail, above my bed, is painted. His work, here.

There’s a decanter of wine on the desk, which I suspect is from Dorian since he’s been trying to convince me to like wine.

The whole room is enormous. Beautiful. And apparently mine.

“Thank you,” I say to them, knowing it’s not enough.

“You have earned it, Ilaana.” Cassandra is practically glowing. I think this is the first time she’s called me by name.

“We will leave you to explore your space in peace,” Josephine says, attempting to herd everyone out of the room. It’s almost convincing—she only wobbles a little.

“But you better come back down,” Dorian tells me. “Or I’ll make sure Sera has a key.”

“Oi,” Sera says, sounding offended. “You think I need a key?”

A moment later, they’re all gone. Solas is the last to leave.

At first, I think he might linger, but he doesn’t.

And then I’m alone, but for once, I’m not lonely.

 

When I finally fall into my bed, some hours later with aching cheeks from laughing and an aching toe Scout Harding trod on in her new boots, for a while I just lie there, staring up at the ceiling. The world is ending, but for the first time in my memory, I’m happy. Also drunk again, because Sera trotted out that apple honey whatever it was, and it was very popular. I think I saw her take a shot of it off the new arcanist’s chest. I think I also saw Elera kissing her scout, whose name I should find out.

I drift for a time, letting my mind wander through everything the past few months have held. My life was on a set path before the conclave. Now it is my own in a way I never expected. It belongs to the Inquisition for now—and it might always—but the world has opened before me. Both worlds, this one and the Fade.

I should tell Solas about my dreaming. If anyone would be able to tell me what I’m doing and whether it’s normal, he would.

Yes. I’ll talk to him in the morning.

My eyes drift closed in a haze of contentment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *fires fluff cannon*
> 
> I just--the idea of Cole's present being everyone SUPER happy makes me super happy. Also happy-drunk Cass.


	30. Everything

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dreamers, man.

I find him in the rotunda, looking at his sketched out fresco with his usual critical eye.

“Solas,” I say, and he turns.

His eyes widen, and he opens his mouth to speak.

Before he can interrupt and before I lose what little nerve I have, I speak first. “I’m interested in what you told me of yourself and of your studies. If you have some time, I’d like to know more. There are things I’d like to discuss with you.”

Solas stares at me for a moment. “You continue to surprise me. All right, let us talk. Preferably somewhere more interesting than this.”

We walk out the door of the rotunda, out the door of the main hall, and up the hill toward Haven’s Chantry.

“Why here?” I ask him.

“Haven is familiar,” he says. “It will always be important to you.”

“We talked about that already.” I follow him up the path. We have. Just last night.

I wonder if I’m still a little tipsy. That can’t bode well for later.

He nods and walks onward. We enter the Chantry together for the first time I remember, turning on the same path I took the first time I entered it willingly, free. Through the door to the left. Down the stairs into the torch-lit corridor of the dungeons.

I only now stop to wonder why the Chantry even has a dungeon. This time, at least, I manage to avoid bonking my head on the brazier.

When we reach the end of the corridor, there is the cell where I was kept, the manacles I wore still in the centre of the floor.

“I sat beside you while you slept, studying the Anchor,” he says finally.

He has never spoken of this before, beyond his _I am pleased to see you still live_ the first time we met.

“I’m glad someone was watching over me.” I peer at him. I’m glad that someone was him.

Solas is looking straight ahead, staring at the manacles on the floor.

“You were a mystery,” he says. “You still are. I ran every test I could imagine, searched the Fade, yet found nothing. Cassandra suspected duplicity. She threatened to have me executed as an apostate if I didn’t produce results.”

“Cassandra’s like that with everyone,” I tell him with a half-smile.

He chuckles. “Ha! Yes.”

Solas turns to walk away. I follow him back outside.

He strides away from the Chantry in the sunlight. “You were never going to wake up. How could you, a mortal sent physically through the Fade? I was frustrated. Frightened. The spirits I might have consulted had been driven away by the Breach.” He turns to face me, the slump of remembered defeat in his shoulders. “Although I wished to help, I had no faith in Cassandra, or she in me. I was ready to flee.”

He looks—I have never seen him this way. He has spoken knowledgeably, warmly, even jokingly, but seldom truly openly the way he is doing now. He has seen me frightened. It is not a word I would pair with him, but he uses it so readily. The way he is speaking to me—this moment is precious.

“The Breach threatened the whole world. Where did you plan to go?”

“Someplace far away where I might research a way to repair the Breach before its effects reached me.” Solas’s answering smile is self-deprecating. “I never said it was a good plan.”

He turns away, walking in the direction of the Breach swirling above our heads, and he reaches out his arm.

“I told myself—one more attempt to seal the rifts.” Solas lets his arm drop to his side. I cannot see his face, but he is still staring upward. “No ordinary magic would affect them. I watched the rifts expand and grow, resigned myself to flee, and then—”

I see him grab my wrist once more, raising it toward the rift. Green light explodes from our hands, and he lets my arm fall.

“It seems you hold the key to our salvation,” he says, and that little smile is there again. “You had sealed it with a gesture. And right then, I felt the whole world change.”

My breath catches in my throat. He is looking at me his face full of something gentle and warm. For me. _That_ moment? There, at the first rift? That was the first time we met with me awake.

Solas. I want to say his name, but it won't get past my lips.

“Felt the whole world change?” I step toward him, and he looks down for an instant before meeting my eyes again.

“A figure of speech,” Solas says.

So often he has sought me out, joined me, invited me to walk by his side.

“I’m aware of the metaphor,” I tell him, emboldened for once. “I’m more interested in _felt_.”

This time, for the first time, I see his reaction. His breath hitches, as mine just did, and the way he is looking at me…

His voice is softer, caught in the air as it leaves his lips. “You change…everything.”

“Was it that impressive to see me awake?” I ask, the sentence cracking in the middle.

“You had walked in the Fade, lethallin,” he says, his voice thick with awe. “I have explored the Fade more than anyone alive, but even I can only visit in dreams. But you, you might have been able to visit me while _awake_. Visiting me here, even as a mage—it should not have been so easy for you.”

My throat feels thick, like I can’t quite get a full breath. His words don’t quite process. Visiting him here…I don’t care right now where here is, only that it consists of him and me, and whatever shifted between us is open and inviting between us, crackling with energy, our melding mana responding.

“Solas—“

“You have fractured rules of man and nature, and you will shatter more before you are done.”

On the last word, Solas catches my gaze for an instant, his blue-grey eyes as helpless as I feel, his expression cradling me like he is holding me and I am something of impossible worth. As if to him I am precious. Far from my shattering of rules sounding like a portent of doom, Solas is almost breathless. His lips are parted, his countenance full of emotion laid bare.

I break eye contact, because it is too much and not enough all at once.

“Sweet talker,” I say. I hover near him, and he near me, floating, adrift.

And he starts to turn away.

Solas turning away is worse, far worse. My right hand reaches out without a thought, and my fingers are on the line of his jaw, and he is turning back to me, and—

My lips meet his.

Every nerve in my body flares to life like the Anchor itself.

 _What am I doing?_ He’s never—I pull back, shocked at myself, and this time it’s me turning away, every emotion jangling.

Solas catches me by the waist, a slight shake of his head as if to say _you don’t get to do that and leave_ as he tugs me up against him, his mouth seeking mine with a hunger I can only match with my own. His hands are around my waist, holding me so firmly, his thumb caressing the sensitive place at the base of my ribs. I cannot breathe. Kissing him is beyond my expectations, beyond anything I could have imagined or dreamed.

His lips warm to mine, and my hand finds the small of his back. Solas’s body is firm and warm, and our mana blends together like a sparkling wave of _finally_. The sparks of my lightning and fire swirl with the coolness of winter wind, glinting off perfect snowflakes that surround us with crystalline light.

Touching him—I am touching him, and he is touching me.

I never want him to stop.

My marked hand cradles his neck, feels him with the magic in it. He is all freshness and new growth; he is ancient forests and the pale blue of glacial ice. He is an endless sky of stars, running beneath them with no care but the fierce joy of it. And he is warm in my arms, growing ever warmer under the touch of my hands. His tongue slips into my mouth and meets mine softly, and I shiver under his touch.

We separate for a bare moment, and it is too much. His eyes drink me in like I am the last pure water in Thedas, and again he is shaking his head as if he cannot believe I’m real, as if he cannot help himself, and then his lips find mine again. A small gasp of relief escapes me, but half a heartbeat later he pulls back again, shaking his head.

“We shouldn’t.” Solas’s voice wrenches at my core with the sudden pain it holds. “It isn’t right. Not even here.”

I should be more shocked by the _we shouldn’t_ , but suddenly my mind clears, and I look around. Haven. We are in Haven, the Breach still soaring above us.

“What do you mean, ‘even here?’”

But I know before the words fully breathe their first free breath. He doesn’t need to tell me. I am an utter fool.

“Where did you think we were?” He tilts his head to the side, not mocking, but amused and wondering.

 _We are in the Fade_.

Which means I am only dreaming him. This is only a dream? But—

“This isn’t real,” escapes my mouth, and it feels forlorn. But what did I think, that he was really—that he would really—

But the man in front of me _is_ Solas. He _feels_ like Solas. I feel his mana and mine, I felt him against me moments ago. He is not a demon tempting me or a figment of the Fade made by a heart trying to convince my mind to admit I am in love.

My words make him smile, and in that moment I know it truly is him.

His words from before finally click into place in my mind. He is staring at me in absolute amused wonder because I sought him out _in the Fade_ , which in his own words should be difficult even for a mage. Nearly impossible, maybe.

And I did it.

I am in the Fade _with Solas_.

I found him here. Me. I found _Solas_ in the Fade.

Solas, who knows this place better than anyone else in the world.

He is answering my startled not-question.

“‘Real’ is a matter for debate,” Solas says, and now his face lights with mischief. This is his domain, and he knows it. He leans forward, a smile dancing upon his lips. “Probably best discussed after you…wake up.”

 

I sit up straight in my bed. My new bed, covered in its heavy fur coverlets, and it is morning. My heart is pounding.

I can still taste Solas on my lips, even though we were in the Fade.

_I found him in the Fade._

Sunlight streams through the open balcony doors. Some snow has drifted in.

The quick flutter of my heartbeat is as much for what I apparently did without a thought as it is for kissing Solas. One of those things alone is enough to send my mind sprawling—the two together might turn me to dust.

I raise my fingers to my lips, lips Solas has technically still never kissed.

They are sensitive and wanting, and the rest of me isn’t much better.

I need to see him.

I get out of bed—I went to bed with my clothes on?—and change into a pair of grey breeches with a shirt of brilliant blue silk brocade. To ward off the chill Josephine constantly insists I will catch, I don a circular cowl scarf of infused vyrantium samite, which is of a weave so fine it feels softer than the silk. The fabric lights my nerves, setting them tingling.

My head feels clear enough, in spite of yesterday’s drinking, and I drink some water from a cup on a side table.

In daylight my quarters are even more striking. The mural above my bed is—oh.

For the first time, I actually look at it. It is all blues and greens, my favourite colours. Solas has painted the grove in the Dales where we camped on the way to Val Royeaux. A halla faces outward, looking back over its shoulder at me.

There are no people in the painting, but there is a wolf beyond, at rest. Not hunting.

It reminds me of the statue I once found in Mythal’s temple.

My throat is suddenly dry. He _listens_ to me.

The rest of the room almost pales in comparison.

The sunlight sparkles through the stained glass windows, which are a Dalish mosaic design that casts delicate jeweled light glinting across the floor.

They certainly spared no expense.

I am stalling; I know that.

I think I am terrified to speak to him and find that I imagined it all, truly dreamt it in the way such things usually mean.

My feet carry me down the stairs anyway.

The hall outside is subdued—everyone must be sleeping off Satinalia. A few voices greet me as I pass, but they do not demand I stop.

The door to the rotunda stands open.

I walk through it. This feels more like a dream than the Fade did.

Solas is standing on the opposite side of his desk facing me when I come in, looking at a stack of papers, his hand resting by the wolves I carved.

He looks up, and in one heartbeat I know last night was real. “Sleep well?”

Two words, spoken in the same tone he used in the Fade. _You change…everything_.

“That was incredible,” I say, moving to close the distance between us. “I’ve never done anything like that before, on a number of levels.”

He chuckles, his face full of warmth for a flash of a moment before he sobers. “I apologise. The kiss was impulsive and ill-considered, and I shouldn’t have encouraged it.”

The world suddenly goes very still.

“You did kiss me back. I’m sorry, Solas. If I’m pressuring you—” That is the last thing I want with _any_ lover. Suddenly horrified, I meet his eyes.

“No, you’re not,” he says definitively. His voice turns soft as he holds my gaze. “You have no need to apologise. I—I am perhaps pressuring myself. It has been a long time, and things have always been easier for me in the Fade.”

I can see that, standing here now. His openness there, the different corners of his confidence lit up and shining. He is not shy, not here even, but he is reserved. Guarded, even when caring.

There is a moment of silence, suspended between us.

“I am not sure this is the best idea. It could lead to trouble.” Solas’s face—I have seen him wear many expressions, but confusion is a new one.

In this moment, I know I could walk away. I could agree with him. Perhaps we would both simply remember a surprising moment stolen in the Fade. Go about our lives.

I remember what he said in Redcliffe. That he is not immune to making horrible mistakes, said in the context of an abominable future. I am not so naïve to think this man a simple, humble apostate who happens to be a walking library of knowledge about the most mysterious enigmas of Thedas and arcane study. I do not know who he is or where he came from, but I saw him in the Fade, light from the remembered Breach shining on yet another one of his endless facets.

Solas _is_ more than who he seems to be. What that means, I don’t know. I have known him only a pair of short months, even though they have been months that taught me more than the previous pair of years combined. Even so, his words are a warning, and perhaps one I ought to heed.

But I am grown. In a few years, I would have been Keeper to my clan, as Deshanna is nearing the end of her will to continue in that role. For all my fumbling since my dramatic debut in the world of humans, I am not a child. For all my self-deprecating nonsense about feeling thirteen when I am near him, I am thirty. We are equals, and apart from the single time he called me da’len, his tongue almost tripping over it as if he knew it wasn’t what he wanted to call me, he has only ever treated me as an equal.

And this world, this Inquisition, this path will demand enough sacrifices.

“I’m willing to take that risk, if you are.” My voice is steadier than I expected it to be.

His breath catches. More has shifted between us than a kiss—some fragment of his usual guard has crumbled at my touch. I have no desire to push him.

“I—may be, yes,” he says. “If I could take a little time to think. There are—considerations.”

Just like that, the world snaps back into place. I let out the breath that has perched in my throat.

“Take all the time you need,” I tell him, and I mean it so earnestly I hope a fraction of it shows in my face.

And _he_ lets out a breath as if he has been holding his own.

“Thank you,” he says, relief in every letter. “I am not often thrown by things that happen in dreams. But I am reasonably certain we are awake now, and if you wish to discuss anything, I would enjoy talking.”

Warmth. It blooms between us, comforting like a coverlet pulled up to your chin.

“Yes,” I tell him. “Would you like to walk with me? Outside Skyhold?”

“There is nothing I would like more,” says Solas.

I recognise my own words in his mouth.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really wanted to figure out a way to make this scene flow right into the narrative, and I'm proud of winkling out a way to do it on the coat tails of the fluffy Satinalia bit.
> 
> Also the mural, because yes, he would.
> 
> Also also, the literal only way this scene makes sense to me is if the Inquisitor is a Dreamer, so that's my headcanon.
> 
> Said headcanon has Plans For the Future. >.>
> 
> Anyway, Solas always seems so surprised in this scene (and some of his canon dialogue is literally him going "whut" about it), so I really feel like Inky just sidles up to him in the Fade all casual like without really any idea of why he's all ???? until later.
> 
> Fumbling Behbeh Dreamer is Fumbly.


	31. As Much Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Memories in the Fade, and memories in the heart meet in Crestwood.

The Inquisition grows.

Over the next few weeks, life settles into a tense rhythm. Tense mostly because the situation in Orlais is coming apart at the seams, not least because the empress and her cousin are working out their differences by proxy using their armies and the Orlesian countryside, and it’s not helped by an elven woman rumoured to be the empress’s jilted lover who is harrying both sides. And on top of that, one of the things we discovered in the nightmare that was Corypheus’s future Redcliffe was that he plans to assassinate the empress. Since we are now officially in Orlais, these problems are now the Inquisition’s problems, and likely would be even if we were over the Ferelden border.

My comfort is Solas. While he is taking the time I promised him, he has not removed himself from my daily life. To the contrary, he meets me each morning to walk in the garden, or he seeks me out when I leave the war room to sit crosslegged in a sheltered alcove atop the battlements training our magic together or simply talking, watching the way the sunlight dances across the surrounding mountains through gaps in the ever-moving clouds.

At night, when I dream, I always go to the tallest tower in Skyhold for a time, and he meets me there. I learn the movements of the Fade with him, following through dreams we find together or simply finding a quiet place to sit in long-past summer grasses to stare up at the sun winking golden through the leaves of trees in the valleys around us.

The light changes each time we look at it. That he thinks to point it out to me softens that place in my heart where our friendship dwells. Through trees, on snow, on the frost that gathers on Skyhold’s windows, the crystals of hoarfrost when the sun breaks the fog—light and shadow move across our world, and it matters that he takes the time to see, especially with the weight of Thedas on our shoulders.

We do not spend all our nights together in the Fade; there are times he prefers to be alone, or times when I do. But every night he meets me anyway, and as the days go by, I begin to sense him when he’s near, both in sleep and in waking.

Everything is changing.

We’re approached by a mercenary company called the Chargers—turns out they sent a messenger before Haven—that turns out to be run by a Qunari Ben-Hassrath agent called the Iron Bull. He joins my party; the Chargers join us.

He runs the Chargers in a way that makes me feel at home, because he seems to feel about them the way I do about the people in the Inquisition. They are people, not expendable. I get on particularly with his second-in-command, Krem, a Tevinter who was pushed out of his homeland. The Chargers are unfailingly loyal; Bull is a self-confessed spy, but he agrees to run his reports past Leliana before sending them, and in return we get access to his reports from other Ben-Hassrath agents.

We also bring in a Grey Warden called Blackwall when we start hearing disturbing reports of Wardens vanishing across Orlais and Ferelden, and in addition to that, one day Varric brings an old friend of his to visit.

Meeting Marian Hawke for me is a bit like meeting Leliana. She is the lover of one of my list of famous—or infamous—Dalish mages who have been at the epicentre of change in Thedas since the Fifth Blight.

I meet her on the ramparts on a crisp afternoon not long after Satinalia.

“An’eth’ara, Inquisitor Ilaana,” she says to me upon my arrival, which stops me in my tracks. “Th’ea?”

“Ame son, i na?” I reply automatically.

Varric, unstoppering a bottle of ale not far away, looks at Hawke sideways. “Shit, Hawke, if I knew you were going to lead on your elf foot, I’d have brought more beer.”

Hawke is most definitely human, light brown skin and brilliant blue-green eyes, her black hair partially shaved on one side and otherwise falling in her face. She looks a bit like me. She even has a tattoo (not Dalish vallaslin) at the corner of her left eye. She carries dual daggers on her back and moves like she knows how to use them.

If Varric’s stories are even half true, she does.

“Just trying to be my charming self,” Hawke says to the dwarf.

Her accent is Fereldan with a hint of the Free Marches, and it makes me feel the tiniest bit homesick, even though my clan doesn’t sound like Marchers themselves.

“Your partner is Dalish, isn’t she, Champion?” I ask. “Merrill Sabrae?”

“Do you know her?” Hawke winces, a very slight movement at the corner of her eye, and I know why.

“I met her once a long time ago. The Sabrae clan Second and I were lovers briefly,” I say, then add hurriedly, “He is still alive.”

If he were dead, it would be likely he died at Marian's hands, or Merrill's. Or Varric's, come to think of it. I wish I hadn't said anything.

“Ah. Then you know.” Marian glances at Varric, who mutters something about needing a lot more beer.

“You’ll have no judgement from me,” I tell Hawke, who looks at me sharply as if she isn’t sure she heard me right. “Keeper Marethari meant well, but if my Keeper’s stories are to be believed, she was as stubborn as an bronto in four feet of mud and challenging whatever she had decided was fact was enough to earn you a switching. I know what Merrill was trying to do. It’s…unfortunate it came to what it did.”

“Thank you, Inquisitor. That's one way to put it,” Hawke says, sounding surprised. She leans forward against the battlements. “Merrill was—Merrill is heartbroken. She’s helping the elven refugees displaced by the mage and templar fighting right now. It is a difficult thing when your own people reject you.”

“Yes,” I say simply. “It is.”

I can feel Varric’s eyes on me, even though he’s pretending not to listen.

“What a mess,” Hawke says. An ironic smile pulls her mouth to one side. “I never thought I’d be protecting two Grey Wardens—three, I suppose—but my sister is a Warden, and I didn’t care to see her vanish like the others have. I’ve another friend, and he’s concerned there’s something dangerous going on. He’s in hiding, but he’d like to meet you.”

I wonder if the third is Anders, the mage who—depending on how you define “start”—started the entire mess we’re in. Which is to say, he blew up Kirkwall’s Chantry after years of brutal templar abuse of Kirkwall’s mages. Bit of a chicken and egg scenario to me. Kirkwall’s templars and their cruelty are legendary, I am finding. I have not yet had the courage to ask Cullen more of his experience among them. I cannot reconcile kind, gentle Cullen with the horror stories I have heard about Kirkwall under Knight-Commander Meredith.

“If it has anything to do with Corypheus, let’s just say finding out sooner rather than later is likely a good plan,” I say. “His plans tend to be a bad fit for the world.”

“I’m not sure how helpful I’ll be on that score,” Hawke says. “When I fought him, he was being held in a Grey Warden prison in the Vimmark Mountains, sealed in there for a thousand years with blood magic.”

“All the happiest stories seem to start that way,” I say wryly.

Varric sounds like he might choke on his beer. Hawke ignores him.

“We killed him, but he obviously didn’t stay dead. With the Wardens vanishing and considering where we found him the first time, that’s a bit too much of a coincidence for me.” Hawke turns to look at me. “I don’t want to think the Wardens are involved in all this.”

“Corypheus having the Venatori and the templars is bad enough,” I agree. “Where is this friend of yours?”

“His name is Alistair, and he’s holed up in a cave in Crestwood,” Hawke says. “I’ll meet you there as soon as you’re able to arrange it.”

We talk for a little while longer, about her experiences in Kirkwall—fighting a horde of rampaging Qunari, no less—and about Merrill. I find I like Marian Hawke. It’s refreshing to meet someone who understands what it’s like to become suddenly bigger to others than who you are to yourself, to vanish behind a title.

I’m sad when she has to leave.

“Good luck,” she says. “I’ll see you in Crestwood.”

Hawke turns to go, looking suddenly tired.

“Champion,” I say before she gets to the stairs.

“Marian or Hawke is fine, Inquisitor.”

“Then Ilaana is fine, or Lavellan. Whichever.” I pause. “Will you give Merrill a message for me?”

Hawke blinks, and I can see her walls go up, even though our conversation has been friendly, even jovial in spite of the subject matter. “What message?”

“Will you simply tell her—” I stop, a bit embarrassed, since Varric is here too. “Tell her she’s not alone, and that she’s always welcome at Skyhold. As are you.”

Something in Hawke’s face softens. “Ma serannas, Ilaana.”

I nod. “Enaste, Marian.”

 

Crestwood has been taken over by death.

After days of fighting through shambling undead, red templars, and a massive underwater rift only to discover the cave it was in was underwater because the flaming mayor of Crestwood village flooded it to kill everyone in the village who had the Blight ten years ago, I am exhausted.

We are meant to meet Hawke and Alistair tomorrow, but I cannot even think that far ahead.

The sky has cleared, and the sun has come out to turn the still-sleepy rain to golden mist, but standing around the campsite and listening to the scouts talk about their duties is giving me a headache.

I perch on a rock on the far side of the camp, knees spread and leaning both elbows forward on them, trying to rub some of the kinks out of my neck.

“Come with me, da’lath’in,” Solas says, appearing on silent feet beside me. “I want to show you something.”

My feet are aching, and I am ready to collapse, but I cannot resist following Solas.

We walk for some time in silence, not close enough to touch, but close in a way that feels new. I let him make that choice. I promised him time, and I will give it. If he had asked for time and then taken himself away, I would likely be feeling differently, but he is here, our feet on the earth, and the hills around us are sparkling with gold upon their green.

“Last night in the Fade after we parted, I wandered for a time,” Solas says suddenly. “I found myself in a memory of a dream, echoes of urgency and searching.”

Curious, I look at him. He gazes ahead, into the distance, motioning at me to follow as the path curves around a steep hill and into an enclosed ravine, shaded from the sun that has begun to slope downward for the evening.

“I asked some of the Inquisition soldiers to go ahead this morning, for there was a wyvern making its home here and making meals from the populace, as well as red templars,” Solas says with a small smile. “I hope you will forgive my overstep.”

“Overstep?” Curiosity turns to confusion.

Above, the overhanging stone is parted just enough for a beam of sunlight to fall upon our path. The rock on either side of us is threaded with moss and overhanging bushes, but the sun glints on a vein of serpentstone in the wall of the ravine.

“In the dream, a pair of people sought a child,” Solas tells me. “The spirits remembered their worry, their slowly growing panic. The child had been missing for some time.”

The sound of falling water reaches my ears, echoing, rushing like the sound of waves. My skin tingles. My mana stretches like a cat, relaxing into ease. It responds to its source in the Fade. The veil is thin here, and that sound…

“Solas,” I say, stopping.

The sound of water echoes, present but its source invisible, and in my mind I see a dark hole, too scary to venture into when there is sunlight here. It is the reaction of a child, but it is powerful, deep within me.

“Come with me, da’lath’in,” is all he says, and the smile on his face is wolfish, hiding secrets. The sun touches the silverite chain around his neck, the serpentstone amulet mirroring the veins of serpentstone in the gully.

I start walking again on unsteady feet.

And then the gully opens up, and my instinct sings to me that I know this place.

Of course I know this place.

He stops at the widening plateau, and I look over my shoulder at him. Wonder flickers through me like the wings of a thousand butterflies as I step into the sheltered hidden cove at the head of the gully.

To the left is a cave, and it’s from there the sound of water echoes, passed through its curves from whatever is at the other end.

I know that sound.

And ahead of us, grown over with ivy and surrounded by the first flowers of spring, is a statue of Fen’Harel.

I look around, and I remember.

There is red lyrium here, in huge crystals from the sides of the rock, but I cannot pay it heed, not right now.

The rock is reddish-brown and lumpen, and there are nodes of obsidian and veridium here, but as a child it was the shimmering veins of serpentstone that drew my attention. They are here still, like bits of the sea threaded into stone, and the water echoing through the cave sounds like waves upon the shore.

The comfort of that sound, the sea. I’ve always loved the sound of the sea.

I walk closer to the enormous wolf. It lounges like the wolf he painted in my room, at rest but aware, paws directly out in front of it. I touch one of the wolf’s paws with my hand and feel a thrill of recognition.

I sense Solas drawing near. When he is at my shoulder, he points to the hollow between the wolf’s paws.

“The memory was there, da’lath’in,” he says. “The spirits reflected the fear of your clan, searching for a lost child, and their emotions when they found you, which I do not care to subject you to.”

“Thank you,” I say.

“But the spirits remembered you.” Solas takes my hand. “They remembered curiosity and comfort, a glow they wanted to watch. They watched over you in the Fade when you slept, on the cusp of your magic’s birth. You were warmed by the sun, cradled by the breeze, da’lath’lin. Watched over in two worlds.”

He has not let go of my hand.

“I can see why your feet took you here, of all places.”

“I remember the cave,” I tell him. “It frightened me, but the sound of the water echoing through it was like the tide.”

“Shall we see what is on the other side, now that you do not fear the dark?”

I nod at him shyly, and again I feel that early shyness I felt with him. Being in this place with an adult’s eyes, I _can_ see why my clan found it strange. I cannot, however, forgive them for allowing that to change the way they treated a child.

But I am not a child now.

Solas lets my hand fall, and we walk into the darkness, following the dim glow of deep mushrooms that light the damp walls with aquamarine. Silhouettes of stalagmites show up against the mushrooms’ quiet light.

Walking here is like walking in the Fade between dreams. I am small and I am grown, together and alone. When the cave tunnel blooms into its own sheltered cove, this time it is I who stop at its edge. A waterfall spills into a pool between two enormous harts. Ghilan’nain, then, but behind the waterfall is a flying dragon in fresco upon the wall. The style is kin to Solas’s, but not. Age has not dimmed the paintings. Elves riding harts into battle. What appears to be a darkly armoured templar surrounded by death.

I have the urge to ask if this is real.

“You are very quiet,” Solas says. “I hope I did not offend—”

“You didn’t,” I say to him with a small smile. “It is strange to walk in one of my own memories, outside of the Fade. That is why I’m quiet.”

He saw me as a child, tucked between the Dread Wolf’s paws. It does not bother him.

“We have seen so much death these past few days,” Solas says. “I wanted only to show you something beautiful.”

“What do you think of my clan’s…superstition?” I ask abruptly. “I know you do not believe in our gods as such, but—”

“You wonder if I think them justified for thinking a child cursed by the Dread Wolf?” he asks, an ironic smile dancing on his lips. “Do you truly need to ask?”

“No,” I say. I think of Merrill. Neria. Myself. “It is a wonder the Dalish still have anyone left to call _lethallin_. They chase away those who love our people if we do not love the right way. They are threatened by questions when the answers could free them.”

Solas is watching me, his grey eyes surprised yet again by something I’ve said, I think.

“Do you know why I chose Mythal’s vallaslin?” I ask him. “I do not think I’ve told you.”

He shakes his head. His face is a pool before dawn when no wind has stirred its surface.

“It reminds me not to fear change,” I say. “And that what has always been done may not be justice simply by virtue of having always been done.”

“You are wise,” says Solas. “Most are unwilling to take such a risk.”

 _But not you_ , something in me whispers. Whatever courage I possess, saying that aloud to Solas is beyond it. _At what price, change?_

I have lost my clan, my family (though they distanced themselves long ago), my future. I have paid a high cost to be where I stand. What has Solas paid?

A line has been drawn, from that raw red lyrium Redcliffe, to a snow-covered slope and a veilfire brazier, to this moment.

I have no answers.

But the sun is warm, and beside me Solas is solid, real, and so am I.

I gather what I feel in this moment like small round pebbles, smooth to the touch, each a different colour.

Every day I get to walk beside this man is a mosaic, and I am too close to see what the lines and patchwork tiles we piece together will become.

Today it doesn’t matter.

I touch his shoulder, walk past him toward the pool.

There are some remnants of the wyvern’s life and death beneath the enormous stone hart to my left, but where I sit, the grass is clean, and the water sings. It makes me want to do the same, so I do.

I used to sing when I would walk through the forest near Wycome, when I felt sure the hunters could not hear me. It has been months since I tried, and at first my voice catches on snags where there used to be none, but I watch the water and keep on.

Keeper Deshanna was the only person who I let hear me. Until now.

I hear him come closer, the barest rustle of his naked feet on the grass, and then the now-familiar brush of his mana against mine, and then the heat of his shoulder, a few inches away.

Solas sits beside me, silent. He lets his feet edge into the pool near mine.

The waterfall no longer sound like the sea, but the rocks around us cradle my voice and make it louder, fuller.

I sing a song for Mythal, because speaking of my vallaslin has brought her to mind.

When I finish and look at Solas’s face, his eyes shine like the water.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think it's obvious the grotto in Crestwood is significant somehow to Solas (for later reasons, obviously), but I wanted it to be significant to Ilaana, too. From her childhood, before her clan crossed the Waking Sea to the Free Marches, just a curious child getting a bit lost and sleepy, taking a nap between the paws of Fen'Harel.


	32. Enle Ma: An Interlude

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Through Solas's eyes, a changing world.

Solas walks. It is evening, and she has gone to the tent he made sure they will share. Ilaana is a light sleeper, and the Iron Bull snores louder than Varric. Blackwall, at least, could sleep through a Blight.

It doesn’t make much a difference—a loud snore through two sheets of canvas does not diminish much between five to fifteen feet of proximity—but Solas saw the way the tension in her jaw softened when he moved to share with her.

Soon he will meet her in the Fade, as he does every night now.

What once was a place where his path was directed only by his own matters is a place he now shares. He thought he would feel it to be an intrusion. He doesn’t.

Solas thinks back over their early conversations, relives them, finding the small expressions (her green eyes widening here, a minuscule twitch of her cheek there, an unblinking stare) where he must have missed just how closely she was listening to everything he said.

He ought to have been more careful, but careful is something he has already left far behind.

Crestwood is quiet. The sun has set, and the clouds have returned to obscure the stars. Three Trout Farm is almost idyllic in spite of the death they have found in its every road, lake, and ditch. The rifts are quieted, the dead returned to their rest. Tomorrow they will meet Hawke and the Warden.

For a moment Solas allows himself to feel his fury, but just as quickly, he douses it. The Wardens have likely already made their choices, and Ilaana will soon make her own.

Her name, an old name, one he has not heard among the elves of now. The meaning in it is older still, a place of sacrifice. It is a sad name, one that carries as much pain as she does herself, and that is why he calls her da’lath’in, because in spite of her sorrow, in spite of the way she holds herself as if she has learned the cracks in her being and filled them with her own magic, in spite of the crushing weight that threatens to split those cracks open, she wears her heart outside them.

Solas watched her as they journeyed to Skyhold. She never once asked him for directions, and he should have understood then how she could have found the way. She is so like him. She seeks him out with her eyes, and he has learned the language of her face so well that even when she cannot speak aloud, he can respond.

He has not been careful.

That day, that first day, when he followed her out of Haven to the logging stand, found her leaning against a tree that did not know it supported the mass of all the world on its winter bark, Solas knows he should have simply let her go.

The kindness he showed her in that moment was ultimately cruelty, but he saw her face, saw her unmoored when they spoke of the Dalish, realised too late that she had come to find him not because she needed someone from among the elvhen, another elf, but because she needed someone else who was _like her_. An important distinction.

Solas knows that she recognised their likeness before he did.

She has surprised him, countless times.

He should have known before Skyhold, sensed her in the Fade. But this one, this da’lath’in, she is quiet. Solas sees that she appears near their companions almost like Cole—he sees Cassandra jump, or Blackwall, or even Sera. She is as quiet in the Fade.

She has been taught that the Fade is a danger, full of demons, but the moment he presented her with a story of its wonders, she moved decisively to find out for herself. He mentioned in passing that he had _learned_ to control his dreams, and she set out to teach herself to do just that. It is not an easy thing to do. She may have already been closer to it than most, but the quickness of her mind made simplicity from a weave so complex its threads cannot be counted.

Solas admires her.

Beneath her cracks is something that cannot be bent or broken. Solas thinks that if the weight grows too much, too heavy, whatever shell she carries outside herself will only shatter itself, not her. It will only reveal what he already knows.

He has not been careful.

Solas could worry for her, but he chooses not to, for now. She comes to him when she has a question, a worry, a joy. He trusts she will come to him if she finds herself in danger.

She found him so easily in the Fade that first time. Perhaps it was Satinalia and the lowered inhibitions of drink and food and joyful friends, but he is not convinced.

He had been standing, looking at his fresco and thinking of nothing related to it, and he had heard a soft voice say his name. For half an instant, he had thought it could be a demon. Desire, maybe, or some particularly reckless type of Fear. But then he felt her mana, the familiar flow of it against the edges of his own, and he had been so dumbfounded he had barely managed to speak.

She stunned him speechless in his own domain. And yet again.

He can still feel the soft, cool touch of her fingers pulling his face toward her, her quick pressing of her lips against his, his own shock, a moment of terror, and then knowing nothing except that he could not bear her turning away in humiliation.

For those moments he had lost himself. Or perhaps found himself. Solas isn’t sure.

He watched her work out where they were, her thoughts playing openly across her face, wondering what was real, if he was real, what she had just done and how she had done it. And he had seen her intuit the truth. That as much as anything impressed him, made him into his own name for a heartbeat so he could gently tease her and see if she would, indeed, wake up.

Ilaana had, and she had come directly to him without hesitation or denial, only wonder and kindness he himself did not deserve.

Solas is certain the Inquisition does not possess even a fraction of awareness of who they have chosen as their leader; until that moment, Solas had thought he did.

And now here they are. She managed to surprise him in the Fade.

Solas laughs to himself, half-unbelieving except for the fact that he can’t not believe her. She is real. She can’t be, but she is.

He walks by the edge of Three Trout Pond, watching a fish splash not far from shore. The surface is otherwise smooth, broken only by the green blades of reeds near the edges. The night is quiet. She will not be sleeping when he returns; Solas knows she will wait, and he will not make her wait longer, because he knows she is tired.

But tonight he needed to walk, after the cave, after her song.

He learns something new of her with every passing hour the sun sails obliviously across the sky. At first her voice was rough, unused to music for some time, he thought, but like the shell she wears in all its cracks, it fell away, leaving only something clear and strong behind.

She sang of Mythal, an old song, though not so old as it could be. She sang it with such perfect clarity, her voice echoing back from the stone around them.

Solas knows she has no way of knowing.

His fingers touch the amulet he wears. The Token of the Packmaster.

She has no way of knowing.

Yet despite her ignorance, she intuits what her people so often reject even when they are faced with an array of evidence.

This is perhaps why he has not been careful.

This is perhaps _one_ of the reasons why he has not been careful.

It has been a long time. If you wander long enough with only enough sustenance to keep yourself alive, you forget how much you ache to thrive.

Solas has wandered a very long time.

He knows she is waiting for him. He knows it causes her pain.

He knows he will eventually cause her more.

But he has not been careful, and sometimes when they sit together watching the light change, when she wipes a droplet of apple juice from the corner of her mouth after she takes a bite from the fruit, when they fight side by side and their whirling staves dance, sometimes Solas sees a glimmer of maybe that frightens him.

It frightens him because it, like her, is real.

 

When he returns to the campsite, Blackwall and Bull are sitting and talking, quietly for once. They both nod at him. They are unsure of Solas; he is sure of that.

Solas suspects they think he and Ilaana are already beyond maybe. He finds he does not care.

He is not being careful.

When Solas pulls back the flap on their tent, she is inside, sitting cross-legged with her eyes closed, a small lamp flickering on a low round table between their bedrolls.

She opens her eyes.

That is all she has to do. The glimmer of maybe is there, in his periphery, brighter than a wisp and far more persistent.

“Where did you go?” she asks.

“I walked by the pond,” he says. Solas sits with his feet outside the tent, brushing off the pebbles and bits of grass that cling to them. “I think it will rain before morning.”

She nods. Her eyes reflect back the single flame of the lamp, gold in the midst of green like the world around them this afternoon.

Solas wants to go to her, to sit beside her or in front of her with his knees touching hers, to run the tips of his fingers over her cheekbones and tuck her hair behind her ears. Her hair is getting longer, its curls more pronounced just beneath her ears.

Instead he scoots backward toward his own bedroll, lying down. A moment later, he hears her do the same.

“Solas,” she says.

He likes the way she says his name. Before it meant pride, it meant light, and in Common it is its own cognate. She says it like it is solace, and when she does, he feels he can be.

“Da’lath’in,” he says in answer.

He likes the way the light in her eyes changes when he calls her that.

“What do you think is happening with the Wardens?”

She is fretting.

Solas props himself up on one elbow. “You worry.”

“Very much.” She stretches her arms out in front of her.

She does that every night before she sleeps, pushing her hands against the ground, curving her back to lengthen its muscles after a long day of walking. The lamp’s flame makes her vallaslin darker. Solas represses a sigh, storing that sadness with the sum of the rest that he carries.

Perhaps one day—

“Is it usual for Wardens to hunt their own?” she asks.

She is thinking of those they met outside Crestwood Village, where they fought alongside Wardens and rescued an elven woman who was ready to put her lips to the Joining chalice in gratitude. With a look, Ilaana had asked Solas to talk her out of joining the Grey Wardens and into joining the Inquisition instead. The Wardens they found were hunting Alistair, it seemed.

“I do not believe it is,” Solas tells her. “That they are is worrying on its own.”

She nods.

For a moment, she leans all the way forward, stretching out her hands against the floor, walking them toward him, though he knows she is not pushing the boundary he set.

Solas wishes he could take her hands. He has touched her more often since Redcliffe, even though they both know the touches are meant in friendship. Cole said she needed it, not long ago, but it started before Cole. Solas didn’t know Cole when he visited her after Redcliffe.

_A heartbeat she knows is real, breath she needs to feel against her ear. You were dead, and she was frightened. She hurts, and she tries not to show it. Tiny touches, she watched a memory unfold, and the tiny touches spelled out love. She looks at you and glows brighter. You can help her._

But before Cole spoke those words at Skyhold, Solas saw her face that night after Redcliffe, saw his own death reflected in her eyes, wreathed in the spectre of red lyrium and a future he cannot imagine. Solas wonders what that future self said to her to haunt her so. That night he had not been able to resist. He felt like Cole that night, though they had not yet met him. Solas had sensed her hurt, felt it turned inward as if she alone had to bear it in its rawness. Even with Dorian’s presence, Solas had known it would not be enough. He could not leave that hurt untended, so he had held her, let her feel his heartbeat and his breath until he felt her reassured that he truly still lived.

That had been a strange moment. Solas could not remember the last time someone cared enough about him to be wounded at the thought of his death. Not someone who knew him, anyway.

Stranger still is that Solas believes she does know him, even in her ignorance. In some ways, Solas is more himself wearing a humble apostate’s face than he is in any other guise.

She is the only one.

Her hair spills over her face, and when she rights herself, it is pink from the rush of blood.

“Sleep, da’lath’in,” Solas says. “Whatever tomorrow brings, we face together.”

Ilaana nods sleepily. She removes her trousers as she does every night (they have shared a tent enough for him to know), crawling into her bedroll in a soft tunic and her smalls. She gets hot feet, she says.

Solas pulls back the blanket on his own bedroll and readies himself for sleep. He knows she takes longer to calm the busy-ness of her mind.

“I will see you in the Fade,” she says.

“You will.”

Solas darkens the lamp with a flick of his magic.

He is asleep almost immediately.

 

The Fade is quiet tonight, and before Ilaana joins him, there is someone he must seek.

It takes him only moments. He finds it in the hollow of a hill draped in green. The Black City feels and looks closer here, but as usual, Solas pays it little mind.

Wisdom waits for him, and it smiles when he approaches.

“‘Ma falon,” it says. “You glow brighter tonight.”

It is serene, knowing. Calm and careful like Solas should be. For a time, they speak of their usual things, of paths unfolding and paths untaken. Soon it is time to meet Ilaana—he can feel when she drowses, slipping into sleep—and Solas takes Wisdom’s hands in farewell.

“Enle ma,” says Wisdom. “Enast.”

The spirit smiles. Solas has told it of Ilaana. Wisdom is calm and careful as Solas should be, but its words surprise him.

Wisdom sees his surprise. There is little it does not see. He hesitates, and the spirit sees that too, but after a moment, Solas nods.

“Dareth shiral,” he says quietly.

He needs more time.

For now, he finds Ilaana in a dream.

 

*Note: ‘ma falon = my friend

Enle ma = she ignites you/sparks you [to life]

Enast = I approve

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hesitated before including this, but I think it deserves to stay. Big thanks to FenxShiral's Project Elvhen. Any linguistic mishaps are my own. I speak five languages, but so far Elvhen is not among them.


	33. Empty Places

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> All new, faded for her. An anagram of things to come, in more than one way.

Skyhold feels quieter when we return.

I have been listening to Blackwall’s insistence that the Wardens cannot be working for Corypheus since we left Crestwood, and it is wearing on me. I have little patience for people who deny evidence that is handed to them. It is also very strange that Blackwall has felt nothing of the calling Alistair told us is affecting all the Wardens of Ferelden and Orlais both.

I make it to my bed on weary feet, yet it takes me hours to finally sleep.

I wake feeling troubled, jangled. Solas seemed fine when we met in the Fade, but he left quickly soon after, begging my pardon and vanishing without any trail. Sometimes I forget how well he knows the Fade, and how little I know by contrast.

My body feels sluggish. My dreams after he left were restless, haunted by Redcliffe and Fiona’s stories of demon armies. There seems to be little doubt that the Wardens are somehow connected.

I make my way to Solas, where I find him seated at his table, staring at the wolf carving and making a face at his pewter cup of tea.

Something is wrong.

“Something wrong with your tea?” I ask lightly, hoping that’s all it is without much conviction.

“It is tea,” he says, setting his cup down. “I detest the stuff. But this morning I need to shake the dreams from my mind. I may also need a favour.”

He meets my gaze, and he looks exhausted. The scar on his forehead blends with a crease between his brows.

“You just have to ask.” My pulse quickens, feeling like the ears of a rabbit twitching at the sense of danger.

“One of my oldest friends has been captured by mages, forced into slavery. I heard the cry for help as I slept.” He stands, pacing. His long fingers give small, jerky movements.

“When you left me so suddenly,” I say, and he nods. “I was afraid something had happened. Your friend, is this a spirit?”

Something in him relaxes. His agitated movement calms, and he turns to face me.

“My friend is a spirit of Wisdom. Unlike the spirits clamouring to enter our world through the rifts, it was dwelling quite happily in the Fade.” Solas brightens as he speaks of his friend, but then the joy leaches from his face again. “It was summoned against its will, and it wants my help to regain its freedom and return to the Fade.”

“Against its will?” The thought horrifies me. My skin suddenly itches all over.

Solas sees it and reaches out to take my hand. “My friend is an explorer, seeking lost wisdom and reflecting it. It would happily discuss philosophy with you, but it had no wish to come here physically.”

“Do you have any idea what the mages want with your friend?” I ask him.

“No,” he says, with a definitive shake of his head. “It knows a great deal of lore and history, but a mage could learn that simply by speaking to it in the Fade.”

He goes still for a moment, though his hand grasps mine more tightly after a beat.

“It is possible that they seek information it does not wish to give and intend to torture it,” he says finally.

“That’s horrible,” I say automatically. The entire notion of it is—I cannot help but think of Cole, who always wants to help. He is Compassion and not Wisdom, but to force someone to do your will—it is abominable. “We will help your friend. Immediately.”

“Thank you,” he breathes, and he drops my hand, looking at it as if he hadn’t realised he was holding it. “I got a sense of my friend’s location before I woke. I will mark it on our map.”

“Solas,” I say, then pause. He waits for me to go on. “Thank you for asking me for help. I—I would not see you suffer such a thing alone.”

He looks startled, but his face softens. The crease at his brow fades. “Enaste, da’lath’in,” he says.

 

The place, it turns out, is in the Exalted Plains on the way to our destination in the Western Approach to find out what the Grey Wardens are up to.

Being back in the Dales is a cruel reminder of my people’s history, especially because we are greeted with a felled forest and ramparts dug into deep trenches, filled with the dead. Because of the urgency of our mission, we make our way past them.

In the curve of the river on the way to where we’re going, I see the top of aravels. There is a Dalish camp here. Perhaps once our business here is done, I can visit them, see if there is anything they need that I can help.

The walk is a tense one. Blackwall and Cole stay close, Cole sometimes ranging ahead, but it is Solas who leads today.

When we near the place, Solas breathes out. “Thank you for this, Inquisitor,” he says. “We are not far from where my friend was summoned.”

Cole is next to me. He murmurs near my ear. “Everything here is blurry. It wants to forget, but now the rocks are solid.”

Almost as soon as the words are out of his mouth, there is a body at the foot of a boulder.

“One of the mages,” Solas says. “Killed by arrows, it would seem.”

“Bandits, most likely,” Blackwall says from behind me, sounding disgusted.

Only a few steps more, and there are more corpses.

“These aren’t mages,” Solas says. “The bodies are burned, and these claw marks…”

He trails off. Grim dread sets into my stomach. Spirits pulled forcibly through the veil, compelled to act against their nature—I don’t need a map to know where this is going.

Worse is Solas beside me. “No. No, no, no.”

I break into a run.

Ahead, I sense the arcane energy, an enormous amount of it. There is the summoning circle, and at its centre—

I have never heard Solas make the sound he makes. It could be called a gasp, but it is so sharp it stabs at something within me, deep within me.

“My friend.” He stops in horror, staring at the enormous pride demon that crouches at the heart of the circle.

“They corrupted it,” I breathe. I do not know this spirit, but it doesn’t matter. “The mages turned your friend into a demon.”

This is someone, not something, and what these mages have done is torture. Solas is close enough to me that I can feel his mana, the facets of all its shimmering edges sharper than diamonds and pulsing with pain. Rage. Fear.

“Yes,” is the only word that escapes his throat.

“You said it was a spirit of wisdom, not a fighter.” Cole is pacing behind me as I speak, shaking his head back and forth, back and forth.

“A spirit becomes a demon when denied its original purpose.” The rage has won in his voice.

He is not saying this for my benefit; I already know.

“So they summoned it for something so opposed to its nature that it was corrupted. Fighting?” It has to be. We saw the bodies.

A rustle of dry grass turns both our heads. A short, square-looking mage is approaching with dark hair and a terrified expression.

“Let us ask them,” Solas says.

I would not wish to be on the other side of that anger.

The mage’s face turns to relief, and the tension drops from his shoulders. “A mage! You’re not with the bandits?”

They tortured and corrupted a sentient being to fight bandits. My own rage is kindling, growing with every passing moment that reveals more of this grotesque scene.

And then the mage continues.

“Do you have any lyrium potions? Most of us are exhausted. We’ve been fighting that demon—”

“You _summoned_ that demon!” Solas bellows at the man. “Except it was a spirit of wisdom at the time. You made it kill! You twisted it against its purpose!”

“I—I—I understand how it might be confusing to someone who has not studied demons, but after you help us, I can—” the mage stammers a reply that is so ignorant I gape at him.

I am not Circle trained, but any Dalish apprentice knows this much, at least.

Solas’s voice drops to a hoarse roar of rage. He is a storm about to break upon this mage, and the man has no idea.

“We’re not here to help _you_.”

I find my voice then.

“Word of advice,” I tell the mage. I can hear my own fury in my words. “I’d hold off on explaining how demons work to my friend here.”

“Listen to me,” the mage pleads. “I was one of the foremost experts in the Kirkwall Circle—”

“Shut. Up.” Solas fixes the man with a stare that should turn him to stone where he stands.

 _This_ mage? Kirkwall’s expert? He cannot be in earnest.

Solas advances on him, and the man scurries a step back. “You summoned it to protect you from the bandits.”

“I—yes.”

“You bound it to obedience, then commanded it to kill. _That_ is when it turned.” The storm that is Solas crackles the air between us, and the mage is beginning to feel it. He turns to me, and all anger is gone from his voice. Only desperation remains. “The summoning circle. We break it, we break the binding. No orders to kill, no conflict with its nature, no demon.”

The Kirkwall mage—this utterly stupid man—dares to interrupt.

“What?” he says. “The binding is the only thing keeping the demon from killing us! Whatever it was before, it is a monster now!”

This is the wrong thing to say.

“Da’lath’in, _please_.” I have never heard such a tone in Solas’s voice, and I never want to hear it again. His voice breaks.

Does he truly think I would side with this man over him?

“I’ve studied rituals like this, lethallin,” I tell him. “I should be able to disrupt the binding quickly.”

“ _Thank_ you.” His eyes meet mine for a heartbeat, and then the demon in the circle rises up from its crouch and roars. “We must hurry!”

“When I disrupt the binding, defend yourself if necessary, Blackwall, Cole—but break the stones. Do everything you can to avoid harming this spirit!” I am terrified for a moment that Blackwall, being what he is, will refuse. But after a moment, he nods. Cole, I know I don’t have to convince. He is still pacing, muttering.

Cole is afraid. I will have to speak to him later.

I advance on the summoning circle, pulling my mana to me and spinning it around my hands like I’m skeining yarn. I can feel the circle. It is adept, but not expert. There are weaknesses that these mages have not noticed. Had we not come along, it would have broken, and they would be dead. This does not do anything to dampen my own anger.

I aim my magic at the cracks in their spell. I feel a cool wave as Solas lends me his power as he once did at the Breach, and together we slam our combined mana into the circle of stones.

“Now!” I bellow.

I throw an immolation spell at the first stone just as Cole materialises beside it and shatters it with his daggers. Blackwall shouts a taunt at the demon and plants his shield in front of him. A surge of gratitude almost distracts me.

Solas and Cole and I move from stone to stone, each hitting it with every ounce of strength we can spare. They break one after another. Behind me, I hear Blackwall grunt, and the familiar wave of Solas’s barrier bypasses me to spring up around Blackwall’s body.

We make it to the last stone.

“Nice if you could hurry it up!” Blackwall yells.

“Charge this stone!” I blast the stone with Winter’s Grasp, and then I get out of the way.

Blackwall crashes into it, shield first.

The stone shatters.

I spin in time to see the demon fall to its knees—and slumps into the kneeling shape of a woman with glowing green eyes. We did it.

We’ve saved his friend, this spirit of wisdom.

I am sweating from head to toe, it feels. Cole is spinning one dagger, then the other, not looking at anyone as he jerks back and forth more than paces.

Solas hurries to the spirit.

“Lethallin,” he says to the spirit, crouching in front of it. “Ir abelas.”

“ _Tel_ abelas,” Wisdom says to him. Its voice is ragged, aching. It tears at me. “Enasal. Ir tel’him. Ma melava halani. Mala suledin nadas. Ma ghilana mir din’an.”

My heart breaks. They are not simply friends; they are family. I hear it in her words, words I once wanted to say to Solas but knew it was too soon. _Ma melava halani_. It is a thank you between intimates, between people who have stepped past one another’s walls.

And Wisdom is telling him to guide her to death.

Solas looks away. I want to go to him, but it is not the time.

“Ma nuvenin,” he tells his friend.

I make myself watch, if for no other reason than the fact that he cannot look away. The least I can do is witness.

It is a gentle caress of the air, and Wisdom scatters on the wind.

I breathe, slowly. My sweat cools on my skin, drying, tightening the surface of me. It should be over now. It should be, and I know it isn’t.

“Dareth shiral,” Solas murmurs.

From his crouch, he turns to look at me. His face is anguish. Blackwall and Cole have retreated, giving us space.

“I heard what it said,” I say, coming to one knee beside him. “It was right. You did help it.”

“Now I must endure.” He looks away, at the river beyond.

“Let me know if I can help,” I tell him softly. I see my words wash some small amount of pain from his face. His lips turn upward, weakly, and his eyes close for a breath.

He stands after a moment and faces me. This time it is I who take his hands, and he squeezes them once before letting them fall.

“You already have,” Solas says. Then he turns to face the mages, and his voice changes again, from the voice he uses with me, always gentle, always kind, to the voice he reserves for those who have violated something he holds sacred. “All that remains now is them.”

The Kirkwall enchanter who began this thing approaches cautiously with two others at his back. “Thank you. We would not have risked a summoning, but the roads are too dangerous to travel unprotected.”

I know before he finishes his excuse that I will not stop Solas from killing them. Because Solas is going to kill them.

How many have we killed for lesser crimes than torturing an innocent?

I am right.

Solas strides toward the mages. “You—tortured and killed my friend.”

“We didn’t know! It was just a spirit! The book said it could help us!” The mage is backing away, his companions starting to scatter.

It is over quickly for them.

A kindness they did not show Wisdom.

Perhaps I am wrong to let him. Perhaps it is vengeance and not justice. Perhaps it is both.

Solas stands over their corpses when it is done.

“Damn them all,” he says.

He is weeping.

How many times now has he comforted me?

I close the distance between us.

“What do you need from me?” I ask him.

Placing one hand upon his shoulder, I wish I were Cole in this moment, to know how to help, to be certain I could. Solas lays one of his own over it, holding me, holding him.

“I need some time alone,” he says. He searches my face, and all I can do is nod. “I will meet you back at Skyhold, da’lath’in.”

“Dareth shiral, ‘ma falon,” I say to him.

There is more I want to say, a thousand things that I want to tell him, none of them with words. He meets my eyes once more before he pulls away.

His shoulders are slumped as he walks to the northeast, toward the forest.

I know I will not see him in the Fade tonight.

I want to follow, but he has told me what he needs, and I will respect it. For several minutes I stare after his departing back, warring with myself.

And then Cole is there, and his hand finds mine. “He hurts, but you help. He knows.”

It eases some of the stuck, painful lump beneath my breast.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This quest is something really radical, I think. Not only is the title an anagram for Solas's other name, but it establishes something more firmly than I think we've seen before in Thedas: the unreliability of the worldbuilding itself. We have learned Thedas through the Chantry's eyes, where "spirit" and "demon" can be used interchangeably, where the Fade is a place only to fear, full of danger.
> 
> In this we see that on full display, from the other possible ways the Inquisitor can react to Solas, to the Kirkwall mage asserting that he's an *expert*.
> 
> And we see Solas with a level of compassion no one else around him will show. Similar to what we saw with Anders, less so to what we saw with Wynne, who took her own unusual situation as a happy accident and didn't seem to pause to dig into what the implications were.
> 
> Anyway, one of my favourite all time side quests in these games. Ilaana is learning.
> 
> Translation of what Wisdom says:
> 
> Solas: I am sorry.
> 
> Wisdom: I'm not. I am happy. You gave of your time to help me. You must endure. Guide me into death.
> 
> Solas: As you wish.


	34. And Emptier Still

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There is little worse than wondering when someone you love will return.

For the first time, I wish I could ignore my title and return to Skyhold to wait for him.

But I cannot.

Dorian meets us back at the Inquisition camp, and Blackwall murmurs to Scout Harding about what happened. Cassandra and Varric are somewhere, as are Vivienne and Sera and Bull, but I don’t see them. Perhaps dealing with some of the undead at the ramparts. Bull would like that.

“One of the scouts saw Solas walking alone,” Dorian starts to say, and I shake my head once. He falls silent.

“Will you walk with me?” I ask him.

“Of course.”

Before we leave again, I put a hand on Dorian’s shoulder to stay him for a moment. “Blackwall?”

The Warden turns to look at me. I still do not know the man well, but he trusted me today. He helped me, helped Solas. I won't forget it.

“Thank you,” I tell him. “I know what we saw could look confusing, but believe me when I say you did the right thing.”

“You don’t have to tell me, Inquisitor,” Blackwall says. “I don’t speak elven, but any fool with half a brain could see relief and gratitude, after you broke those stones. I hope Solas will find some peace.”

“So do I,” I say.

I’m about to leave with Dorian, but Cole lingers nearby.

“You can join us, Cole,” I tell him. “I would be…very happy for your presence.”

And so we walk, the three of us. I tell Dorian what happened, and he is quiet for a while as we walk under the trees. Cole walks ahead, then behind, then ahead again.

“In Tevinter, we summon spirits as servants,” Dorian says. “I’ve never given it much thought, but then, I suppose I wouldn’t, would I? When something is normal, it’s normal! Slaves, spirit servants. You’re taught not to think of them as people.”

The self-loathing in his voice is clear despite the jovial tone.

“When did you figure out they were?” I ask him.

“Slaves? Around the time I started drinking heavily.” He gives me a sardonic smile. “Spirits? Never thought about it before I encountered our friend here.”

He watches me closely while I walk. The path between walls of stone is so unlike Crestwood, yet it is so like Crestwood. There are elven paintings on the rock, the sun golden through the green of the trees above, but the air is warmer, almost too warm, and it is dry here. No mist sparkles in the sun.

“You care for him, don’t you?” Dorian asks. “I’ve noticed the way you look at each other. His amulet—you gave him that at Satinalia, didn’t you?”

The way he is saying this. I sigh. It feels almost good to breathe in until my lungs are full and then let it all out at once.

“We’re not—” I stop. Not what? “I don’t know what we are.”

“That’s what worries me.”

I stop walking. “What?”

“Oh, don’t you fret, my dear. I don’t disapprove. But let’s just say I’ve seen the look on your face when you lose him once before, and it’s a look I could go the rest of my life without seeing again.” Dorian comes to me and puts his hands on my shoulders, peering into my face.

His eyes are the same brown-gold-green as the sun on leaves. Or perhaps it is a trick of the light.

“What is it he calls you? Da’lath—”

“Da’lath’in,” I mutter, my cheeks growing warm.

“And what does that mean?” Dorian’s eyes will not let me escape his interrogation.

“It’s difficult to translate.” When he only keeps staring at me, I sigh. “ _Da_ is a diminutive, like in da’len, little one.”

“Precious.”

I’m afraid to go on. _Lath_ is…well. Love. I look at the ground, which doesn’t help.

“ _Lath_ is love,” I say, quickly enough that I might have to repeat it if Dorian didn’t catch it. But he definitely did. His eyebrow hikes up. I hurry on. “It’s not—it’s not that. It is a name for someone who is openhearted, I suppose. Someone who wears their heart on their sleeve. It’s an endearment, but not always a romantic one.”

I’ve never really thought through it. It’s just what Solas calls me.

“I see,” Dorian says. “Perhaps I misjudged the man.”

“What do you mean?” I am genuinely curious to hear what Dorian thinks of Solas. I have spoken to no one about any of this, except occasionally Cole, when he brings it up first. And then only in snippets.

“With me he is aloof, which I can’t fathom. It’s not fair for him to be immune to my charms.” When I roll my eyes, Dorian gives my shoulders a little shimmy with his hands. “He’s cordial enough, but I get the feeling he is a difficult person to reach, at least for a Tevinter mage. It wasn’t until this trip I really got to see how he is with you, though.”

“He is one of the kindest people I know,” I say.

“I do not doubt you. I only find it fascinating that he is so disarmed by you. He does not seem to be a man easily disarmed.” Dorian waggles my shoulders again, drumming his fingers on them. “But I suppose neither am I, and you utterly disarm me, so here goes. I detest confessions. I have few friends. Or more correctly, I have one friend.”

My mouth falls open a little. “Dorian—”

“No, let me finish. You are the first person I have met who accepts me—perhaps even cares for me—without guile or expectation. I would be a poor friend indeed if I didn’t want what is absolutely best for you.” Dorian pulls me into a tight hug then, speaking into my ear. “I know what you did for him today, and I can see that you’re fretting over him. If you can’t comfort him, at least let me comfort you.”

I tighten my own arms around his waist, surprised by the sting of tears in my eyes. “Thank you, Dorian.”

When he finally breaks away, he gives me that wicked half grin of his. “Of course. I’m delightful. I thought you already knew that.”

“I do. You’d never let me forget it.”

“Ha! We’re a right pair, my darling.” He looks around. “Cole! I’ve a mind to make sure the Inquisitor is surrounded by strapping, well-dressed men, and she needs one on her other arm.”

Cole appears almost directly in front of me, peering out from under his hat. “I’ve got lots of straps,” he says dubiously. “But Vivienne always says my clothes are ugly.”

“Lots of straps, eh? Don’t tell the Iron Bull.” Dorian winks at me. “There’s only one opinion of you that really matters, Cole, and that’s Ilaana’s. And she adores you, so get on the other side of her so we can walk until she’s less lonely. Two of us might not equal one Solas, but we’re going to have to try. It’s a long way to the Approach.”

“Solas hurts,” Cole says, obediently looping his arm through mine. “But Ilaana will help him. She always helps him. And he helps her. They are brighter together. It makes me happy.”

In this moment I am so grateful to be surrounded by the weirdest people in Thedas that I have to blink away the tears that threaten to make Dorian very uncomfortable, if he hates confessions so much.

“Well,” Dorian says, grabbing my other arm and propelling our odd little trio forward, “if _you_ say so.”

“I do,” insists Cole. “He knows she’s real now.”

I don’t know what that means, but I’ll take his word for it.

 

It takes us another week to get to the Western Approach. I am thankful for the Inquisitions new mounts. With watchtowers built in the Hinterlands thanks to Cullen’s forces, Horsemaster Dennet joined us at Skyhold, and not a moment too soon.

The whole way to the Approach, I cannot stop thinking about Solas. It is torture, moving in the opposite direction I want to go.

I do not find him in the Fade, nor do I feel him near me. That worries me more than anything else.

Or perhaps not _anything_ else—when we meet Alistair and Hawke at an old Tevinter ruin in the Western Approach and find out what the Wardens have been up to, that worries me to the point of near panic.

We find the Wardens under the control of Livius Erimond, a Venatori magister. And if that weren’t bad enough, he is having them sacrifice one another in order to bind demons.

Corypheus’s demon army.

We interrupt one such sacrifice, too late to save the victim. Erimond can _control_ the entranced Wardens somehow, which includes their bound demons. We beat them, barely. Erimond manages to flee.

And I stumble off to the side of the platform and vomit into the sand.

Dorian is with me—he or Cole or both are always with me this week—and he comes to my side, patting my back with slow circles while I heave what feels like everything I’ve ever eaten into this cold, forsaken desert.

Hawke finds me like that. “Ilaana! What happened?”

I look up, hurriedly wiping my mouth. “I’m so sorry, Hawke, I—”

“It is as you feared,” Alistair says to her, his footsteps reaching my notice a beat too late. “The Warden mages are under thrall to Corypheus.”

“And their warriors?” Hawke asks urgently, then she looks at me, half a pace from my stomach’s contents. She closes her eyes, deflating. “Of course. Sacrificed in the ritual. What a waste.”

I still feel lightheaded. I wipe away cold sweat from my brow. Dorian moves to give me space.

“Human sacrifice, demon summoning…who looks at this and thinks it’s a good idea?” I am sickened and repulsed—very literally—but I am shivering with something that isn’t the cold. It is rage.

Hawke looks like she agrees. “The fearful and the foolish.”

“Despite their lack of wisdom, they acted out of necessity,” Alistair says.

I close my eyes, swaying on my feet. That is what the mages who murdered Solas’s friend said. We had to, because we were afraid.

“All blood mages do,” Hawke says for me. Her anger burns through her words. “Everyone has a story they tell themselves to justify bad decisions. And it never matters.”

I glance at Dorian. Varric and Cassandra are a short distance away, Cassandra kneeling by a pile of Warden corpses. I can’t look past the shield on Cassandra’s back.

Part of me is grateful Solas isn’t here to see this.

“In the end, you are always alone with your actions.” Hawke turns and strides away, leaving us to follow.

When we get back to camp, we find we will be returning to Skyhold.

One mention of the place we will have to go to find the Wardens and stop them, and Cole starts shaking, muttering under his breath about a cupboard and the bad day. The archdemon.

I remember him mentioning that at Haven, and more.

I go to sit by him, putting an arm around him without a word and holding him tight to me. He has told me before, about Adamant.

“It should be empty,” Cole says loudly.

Alistair and Hawke stop talking with Cassandra and stare at him. I give my head a sharp shake to tell them to leave him be. Hawke’s eyes linger on us, but not without empathy.

 

We turn back to Skyhold first thing in the morning.

Solas is still not there when we arrive two weeks later.

 

Days pass, days I spend mostly in conference with Hawke and the advisors, trying to form some sort of plan of attack to assault Adamant fortress.

Whenever I get a moment, I go to the ramparts and look out over the mountains.

I feel very alone, in spite of everything Dorian and Cole and the others have done to distract me from Solas’s absence.

Skyhold feels vast and echoing without him. At night wisps swirl around me as I wander the Fade. By day people do the same.

It troubles me how much I miss him. I have known him such a relatively short time, but here he is, in my heart. Weeks of walking, talking, exploring by daylight and by dreams, and this empty silence threatens to eclipse me.

I am crouched in the garden, tending to some of the herb patches before dinner, when Cole appears by my side.

“You have been sad, but you’ll be happy now,” he says, his eyes lit up for the first time I can remember in weeks. “Grief, groaning under the weight of the longest light, feet fading in the Fade, waiting, wishing. You brought him back.”

“Solas,” I say, quickly rising from my crouch. “Cole, _thank_ you.”

I half trot out through the hall, ignoring anyone’s eyes upon me. Forcing myself to use the stairs and not just jump like I usually do takes more effort than I care to admit.

For a moment, I’m terrified I misunderstood. I hurry toward the main gate.

And there he is, before me. Walking in my direction, his gaze averted. The line of his back is curved, not straight like he usually stands. He has nothing with him but the clothes on his back and his staff.

“Inquisitor,” he says. That title in his mouth is biting down on a stone of a peach when expecting only fruit. I don't want to be the Inquisitor to him.

“How are you, Solas?” I search his face for something, anything. He looks as if someone has drained the hope from him.

“It hurts. It always does. But I will survive.” He finally meets my eyes.

“Thank you for coming back.” The words hurt leaving my lips. I didn’t realise until this moment how much I feared he wouldn’t.

“You were a true friend,” he says. “You did everything you could to help. I could hardly abandon you now.”

There is distance between us where bare weeks ago we spent our days and nights in each other’s company without running out of words to say.

“Where did you go?” The question feels safe enough, until I can bridge this confusion.

He shifts his weight. “I found a quiet spot and went to sleep. I visited the place in the Fade where my friend used to be. It’s empty, but there are stirrings of energy in the Void.”

I nod at him. “Perhaps some part of your friend will someday return to the Fade, though I know it will never be the same. I am so sorry, Solas.”

“Don’t be. I could not have asked for a better friend in this.” There it is, some warmth returned to his voice. His with-me voice. It soothes away some of my fear, places stones at the edges of the gap, allows me to step closer to him.

“I worried for you, lethallin,” I tell him. “The next time you have to mourn, you don’t have to be alone.”

He looks at his feet. “It’s been so long since I could trust someone.”

“I know.” I swallow, my throat suddenly dry.

Solas raises his head to look at me. “I’ll work on it. And thank you. I appreciate what you did for my friend. It matters. _You_ matter.”

He just said that. He is back. Perhaps truly.

There are things he has said to me many times to comfort me, enough that I don’t even think before I give one back to him.

“If you are hungry, I was going to have dinner in my quarters,” I tell him. “I would welcome your company, if you would like to join me.”

“I would…like that.” Solas’s face moves in that expression of surprise I’m so used to seeing by now. It is like he is learning me again. “I will join you.”

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Writing this, I thought a lot about the parallels between Here Lies the Abyss and All New, Faded for Her. Solas's reaction to the Wardens is pretty extreme; the timing worked out this playthrough, and connecting those dots felt right.
> 
> Also Dorian and Cole--they are bright, warm places.
> 
> I had never heard the "It mattered. You matter." dialogue before tonight (so a few days after I wrote this), and I'm thankful for my Cullenmance playthrough for allowing me to (though the balcony scene kind of destroyed me all over again, since I was locked into the Cullenmance).
> 
> (Yeah, I'm a goner. Ugh, Patrick Weekes, why do you murder our souls. We love you, but owie.)


	35. Vhenan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> But losing you would--
> 
> The one where it was all over for Ilaana.

It is not difficult to ask for an extra portion to be sent up with my dinner. We run into Cassandra on our way through the hall, and she stops us.

“You have returned, Solas,” she says. “I am sorry about your—friend.”

“Thank you, Seeker,” he replies. “I apologise for my absence.”

Cassandra takes one look at my face, then waves us away. “We can speak tomorrow.”

“Thank you,” I tell her.

She nods, looking troubled. “I am sorry to ask, but when you are finished eating, Cullen would like to go over the troop movements with you in the war room. I was coming to look for you.”

“Of course,” I say. “Two hours—tell him to have his own dinner. I would bet you five sovereigns he hasn’t done that yet.”

A smile crinkles the corners of Cassandra’s eyes. “I will not take a bet I expect to lose. But I will try and get that stubborn man to eat.”

With that, we are free, or as free as we can be for two hours.

Our footsteps are loud and hollow on the stairs leading up to my quarters. Neither of us speaks.

The sun is beaming through the stained glass when we reach my room, and already a table is set, though with only one chair. I pull it over to the chaise lounge and motion at Solas to sit.

He sits.

“How have you been, Ilaana?” He looks up at me as I move to sit beside him.

“I’m still here,” I say. “The Western Approach was…trying. As much as I missed your company, I am thankful you did not have to witness it. It was disturbingly close to—close to what we saw in the Exalted Plains, though not as personally relevant.”

Solas goes still at that. “Tell me.”

I tell him as dispassionately as I can, but I cannot stop the fury from invading my voice. It threatens to steal my breath, and I have to force myself to slow my breathing when someone from the kitchens arrives with our dinner.

Solas waits until they leave. “What could the Wardens be thinking?” he bursts out angrily. “Blood magic? Human sacrifice?”

“We will stop them together,” I say without thinking.

He drums his fingers against his knee. After a few heartbeats, they quiet.

“I am sorry, da’lath’in,” he says softly. “I told you in Crestwood that I would be with you when we confronted the Wardens, and I was not.”

“Solas, you had every right and every reason to need time to yourself. If I wish I had been with you, it is not so you could help me, but so I could help _you_.” I press my lips together, closing my eyes for a second before opening them again. “I cannot bear the thought of you suffering alone. You have found me in some of my most vulnerable moments. I would…”

I don’t know what I want to say.

“As I said outside, you have been a true friend.” He looks conflicted as he says it, like he wants to say something else but isn’t certain it will come out right. “Come. Our food will get cold.”

So we eat, and we talk, and two hours flash by like they are mere heartbeats.

Slowly I calm, regaining my sense of my world being righted.

He is back, but things are not the same. His walls have returned, and I cannot try to find purchase with my fingers. He has asked me for time, and he has lost his friend.

I promised I would wait. Some part of me whispers that I will be waiting forever, that there is no way he returns what I feel for him. That part grows louder as his footsteps fade, and louder still as I am forced to follow.

I speak with Cullen, poring over maps and troop movements and Leliana’s reports from her scouts in the Western Approach.

Solas did not mention meeting me in the Fade tonight, and my hope dwindles further when I realise it.

I have been a fool.

I am in love with him.

 

Morning wakes me with rays of sunlight on my face and a still-aching heart.

I hate feeling this way, this hole in the routine that I so joyfully created with him.

My day is full of meetings, with Hawke, with Josephine, with Leliana, with Cullen.

Cullen is gentle with me, his eyes soft and gold-brown. “Cassandra tells me Solas has returned. You must be relieved.”

Does _everyone_ know how I feel about him?

“I am, thank you, Commander. Grief is not something one should have to bear alone.”

“Indeed,” he says softly. “Inquisitor, I hope you will not think me too forward, but I am thankful, for your sake, that he is back. You both clearly care for one another.”

“It’s not—” The tips of my ears flame into uncomfortable warmth. “It’s not what people think. We’re friends.”

Cullen gives me a smile that is almost sad, and I don’t know why. “Of course, Inquisitor.”

I leave his office feeling simultaneously better and worse. Everyone I pass seems to want to discuss his return, mostly how it relates to me. When I shuffle through the door into the rotunda without even remembering he is usually there—he’s been _not_ there since our return from the Western Approach—I almost trip to a halt when I see him.

Solas looks almost as startled to see me as I am to see him.

“Inquisitor,” he says, and I try not to flinch from my title. He smiles. He breaks eye contact. He looks back to me almost shyly. “Do you have a moment?”

“Always,” I say.

We walk to my quarters in silence again, up the stairs in that hollow, echoing tower.

At the top, he goes straight out to the balcony, where the sun lights his back, about to sink beneath the snow-covered line of the mountain. I follow, unsure of what else to do.

“What were you like?” he asks, turning to face me when he reaches the rail overlooking the valley far below. “Before the Anchor.”

The Anchor? I glance down at my hand, where I hardly notice the thing anymore. It flickers green against my skin, quiet.

“Has it affected you? Changed you in any way? Your mind, your morals, your—” Solas’s voice cracks, and he breaks off as if it has betrayed him. “Spirit?”

“No,” I say slowly. “Not that I’m aware of. Do you think I would notice if it had?”

“No, I suppose not. That’s an excellent point.”

That response makes me feel slightly alarmed. “But I truly don’t believe it has. If anything, the changes in myself that I’ve noticed have been due to experience, not the mark on my hand. They’ve made me…more me, I think. Why do you ask?”

“You show a wisdom I’ve not seen since,” he pauses as if considering. “Since my deepest journeys into the ancient memories of the Fade. You are not what I expected.”

“What have I done that’s so surprising?” I’ve wanted to ask this question since I met this person. My heart is coaxing itself to a faster beat.

“Most people are predictable,” he says. His hands give a helpless twitch at his sides. His grey-eyed gaze is on me, intense as if he is still trying to puzzle me out. “You have shown subtlety in your actions, a wisdom that goes against everything I expected. If the Dalish could have raised someone with a spirit like yours, have I misjudged them?”

Are the Dalish what this is about?

“I’m not sure,” I say, choosing my words with care. “Most of the Dalish care more about impressing other hunters with the best shot, or talking about how horrible humans are. I don’t hold the Dalish up as perfect, but we have something worth honouring. Yet there are only a few who seem to care about the old ways, and those who do are too quick to discount anything that contradicts what they expect those old ways to be. You know my experience with my clan, Solas. Perhaps their superstitions shaped my life, but they did not make me who I am. My choices are mine.”

His face lights up, and he smiles, a real smile. “Yes—you are wise to give yourself that due. Although the Dalish may have guided you in some fashion, as you say. Perhaps that is it. I suppose it must be. Most people act with so little understanding of the world, but not you.”

My heartbeat has increased its tempo. “So what does this mean, Solas?”

He takes a step toward me. “It means I have not forgotten the kiss.”

The sun cradles him, reaches out its hands to touch me. That tight ball of confusion and fear I’ve had nestled under my ribs since he walked away from me in the Exalted Plains unfurls and dissipates. My skin is pebbled with gooseflesh, and it’s not the cold.

“Good,” I say, stepping forward, my arms crossed at the small of my back.

And there is us, the melding of our mana remembering the thousand tiny comforts it brought. Through Haven. Through Redcliffe. Through these mountains to this place.

He moves closer to me, too, his body brushing mine, the light from the setting sun washing over us.

Solas is shaking his head yet again. What is it that he cannot let go of?

All I know is that I cannot bear for him to walk away from me again. When he turns to do so, I reach out and catch his arm.

“Don’t go,” I whisper.

“It would be kinder in the long run,” he says, turning to face me, his voice full of as many emotions as he has facets. There is something aching and raw in his words, and I cannot move. “But losing you would—”

Solas breaks off and closes the distance between us. His arms are around my waist, pulling me against him as if letting go would cause him physical pain. Our lips meet, and he kisses me slowly, softly, and when I lift my hand to his elbow, he enfolds me in his arms, pulling me closer still.

The world spins around us, and I lose myself in his touch, in the solidity of his body against mine, warm and alive, his heart beating so fast, so fast, just as mine is. My hands mould to his back, seeking out the lines of muscle and bone I have seen so many times when we travel and are bathing in a passing stream. A hundred moments, more. Under my fingers, he becomes mine, and I am breathless.

For weeks, I have waited for him, wanted him.

He leans over me, deepening the kiss, supporting me as I dip backward.

My hands cling to him, and when he pulls me upright again, I hover for a moment, trying to find my footing.

“Ar lath ma, vhenan,” he says to me.

 _Vhenan_.

I am speechless.

He kisses me once more, his fingers trailing in my hair.

Solas turns to go, and I follow, stopping at the balcony door. He turns back, his eyes glowing with something I cannot guess. Something in mine must stop him as readily as my hand on his arm did moments ago.

“May I return tonight?” he asks from the top of the stairs.

Not _Will I see you in the Fade tonight_?

“Please,” I tell him.

The distance between us that grew seems to have vanished in an instant. His face is warm, open, as full of feeling as it is in the Fade, and we are not in the Fade this time.

“Then I will see you soon.”

 

It is still early spring; the sun sets early, leaving me wandering Skyhold.

 _It would be kinder in the long run_.

I find myself atop the battlements where we used to sit watching the light change.

Facing out over the mountains, for the first time in some time, I allow myself to think of the line I started drawing in Redcliffe.

There are many things I do not know about Solas. Where he came from— _a small village to the north_ —how he came to the Inquisition. I have read Leliana’s files on everyone, because I am the Inquisitor, and that is my job. She has little on Solas, an apostate who joined the Inquisition to help seal the Breach. The Breach is now sealed; I remember he said once that he would stay at least until then.

Many things can keep a person somewhere.

I have few illusions.

“You hurt,” Cole says. “He is back, but you hurt.”

He is beside me, peeking out at me from under his hat.

“Yes,” is all I can say after a moment. _Ar lath ma, vhenan_.

“Love wakes, like the light on the mountains. He watches with you, wanting, wishing, wondering. There is so much more to show you, so much work to do. Crumbled stone among split spirits, paint drying on worn walls. It’s gone, and he hurts, but _you_. First you are dying, dreaming, and then you live and you are daring, dreaming more. ‘You shouldn’t be possible, da’lath’in.’” Cole’s pale blue eyes seek mine for once. “‘Enle ma. Enast.’ Wisdom watches as he walks away, and your brightness is reflected in him.”

My heart. “Cole—”

“'Wisdom is knowing when to wake. Let love live, lethallin.’”

I fall silent.

“Am I helping?” Cole asks me. I see in his eyes a hunger for my affirmation, not an empty one, but truth.

“Yes.” The wind slips its sound around my answer, but I know Cole hears me. “You are helping, lethallin.”

“You call me kin,” he says, and his eyes light.

“You _are_ ,” I tell him. “I am afraid there is pain on the path ahead.”

“There is always hurt,” Cole says. “But I can help.”

I think in this moment, Cole does not know his own wisdom.

I know that I could walk away, wrap the emptiness around me where it has swirled these past weeks, let it guard me against whatever is to come. I know I could cause him pain, Solas, by changing my mind. Some small voice within me whispers that he might be relieved. That small voice whispers that this is what he expects, that this is what he thinks he deserves.

It seems we can both see the path ahead, tangled thorns and no way to avoid them but to refuse to walk forward.

There is something he cannot tell me; that I know. From that I can guess two things: that it is something he fears is so big it will crush us, and that it is something causing him more pain than Wisdom’s death.

Before me is that thicket of tangled thorns, and I am about to walk into it naked.

The longer I stand on the battlements, the clearer the view even in the falling darkness.

If I am going to take these steps, I cannot do it without seeing what awaits. I cannot do it thinking that I can change what he will tell me, and what he will hide. I cannot count on Cole to communicate what he will not. I shouldn’t have to.

 _Is it worth it_?

Dorian worries, but Dorian doesn’t know.

It may be kinder to myself not to risk, kinder to be careful, to walk forward with only duty and demands of an Inquisition and a world teetering on the brink of destruction.

It is that thought that cuts away my doubt.

Whatever comes, however sharp the thorns, I will not survive to defeat Corypheus alone. I cannot do what I must if I am bleeding from a wound far deeper than scratches.

_But losing you would—_

There, in that moment, in the half heartbeat before his lips touched mine. There, in his voice and the ocean of my heart. There, in the way he shapes his words to me like a sculptor lovingly moulds their clay.

The only way out is through.

Wisdom is knowing when to wake, and my eyes are open, wide.

When Cole leaves, I stay. The moon rises, with the setting sun, a crescent, but waxing.

It changes the light on the slopes of snow.

I leave careful behind.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> He warns her so many times, verbally and non-verbally, that I felt it really important that Ilaana not only recognise that, but engage with it consciously.
> 
> This is also a little autobiographical, this reaction. I have been in that place, of falling in love hard and knowing that the only way out is through. Expecting the pain but knowing that avoiding it would be worse. It is not always wisdom, but sometimes it is compassion, for self and for others, if we have it in us to endure it.*
> 
>  
> 
> *This does not apply to abusive situations; it is not that kind of pain. He's not that kind of wolf.


	36. Da'lath'in

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Solas comes to her at long last.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is very NSFW! I know the Explicit rating has been overkill for erm...35 chapters, but in this one it is decidedly deserved.

I am waiting on my balcony when he returns.

It is just past dinner. I saw him in the hall when I was there. Like so many times before, he came to sit at my side, close enough that every brush of my mana against his sent ripples over my skin.

When he rose to leave the table, he said simply, “An hour, da’lath’in.”

I hear his footsteps, faint and distant.

This time, Solas doesn’t knock.

I feel him approach, my skin cool from the night air. The moon has risen high, and the world around Skyhold is sharp, jagged lines of every shade of blue.

“Vhenan,” he says from the doorway.

The sight of him almost undoes me.

I watch him, my mind etching his likeness into its depths. The moonlight glints off the serpentstone amulet around his neck. I am in simple clothing, like he is. Soft black breeches,a tunic of green everknit wool with sleeves long enough to hide my hands in.

“You came,” I hear myself say.

Solas is still a few feet away, leaning against the doorway where I stood as he left earlier.

“No power of this world or others could have kept me,” he says.

I take the step and a half to him as I did earlier, my hands joined at the small of my back. I need him not to turn away, not to retreat. I cannot walk this path alone.

His breath catches in his throat, but he does not move to increase the distance between us. Our bodies are an inch apart, a cocoon of warmth in the cold of the night.

Solas gazes down at me. He is so close. I am only perhaps a hand shorter, and his eyes are nearly level with mine.

He lifts his hand, raising it to my face, but pauses. I can feel the heat radiating from it against my cheek.

“Is this what you want, vhenan?” he asks softly. “Is this truly what you want?”

“Isalan na, vhen’an’ara,” I say.

His hand finds my cheek, his fingers brushing my hair back from my face. I reach out my hand, placing it over his heart. Solas is calm, deliberate on his surface, but his heart races against my palm.

I see the exact moment he lets go of whatever it is, whatever chains have tugged at him, whatever forces have pulled him back. His eyes darken, and his fingers push back into my hair, weaving among the loose curls. His heart jumps as I move my hand up his chest, exploring the planes of his body. My fingers brush his collarbone, the soft leather strap that holds the wolf jawbone, the skin-warmed silverite chain that holds the serpentstone.

My breasts brush against his chest. Heartbeats race by. I can hardly move for the marvel of being allowed to touch him. My left hand finds his waist. My eyes are fixed on the fingers of my right, tracing the place where his tunic meets his skin, watching as goosebumps rise in their wake. When I fastened the amulet around his neck, I thought his reaction was because my hands were cold.

Our breathing has found a common rhythm, shallow and waiting, full of every word we are not saying.

“Ar lath ma,” I whisper.

Our hands mirror each other, right hands at each other’s exposed throats, left hands at each other’s waist, and somehow without moving we are pressed against each other, and I look up to meet his eyes.

Solas kisses me.

The gasp that escapes me is sharp and sudden. His right hand drops to my waist with his left, moving around my sides to meet at the small of my back, and then my arms are around his neck. Every kiss is feathers on the wing, soaring higher, dancing deeper into a silver-touched sky.

His hands slide downward, smoothing over my rear, my hips, returning. I shiver into him, pressing myself closer against him. I can feel him, hard against me, and then he is lifting me off the ground, hands supporting my hips as I wrap my legs around him.

We move backward, toward the rail of the balcony, and he sits me atop it, my back to the mountains, to the moon.

Our kiss breaks, and for the first time, he does not turn away, nor does he look as though he has any intention to. The wide stone rail is cold against my backside, but Solas is warm, feverish.

We are at eye level with one another, and his eyes drink in my face, his lips parted.

“Ane ‘ma da’lath’in,” he murmurs.

The world is far below me, but I have no fear of falling. The moonlight washes me clean, and suddenly I need to see him, all of him.

I run my hands down his shoulders, down his chest, feeling the way they catch his breath. When I reach his waist where my legs encircle him, I pause.

“Solas,” I say. “May I?”

I’m not even sure what I’m asking, but one of his hands pulls me closer.

“Lasa ar’an alas’nira aron fen’en, vhenan,” he says.

I tug his shirts free, slipping my hands under them for the first time. My fingers find the flat, smooth surface of muscle, and a small helpless sound spills from my mouth.

“Vera em su tarasyl,” I say, aware of the sky against my back, empty space hundreds of feet down, anchored against the firmness of his body with only legs and hands.

He lets me pull his tunic up, and I tuck the wolf jawbone beneath, against his skin, before he reaches his arms up and I tug the tunic over his head. I hold it for a moment against his back, and then I let it fall, my hands finding the sides of his face, the length of his jaw.

I light kisses across his cheekbones like stars, and his hands find the bottom of my own tunic,and I do not stop kissing him until it touches my chin, raising my arms, balanced here, floating as its warmth leaves me and the night air sighs against my skin. I am wearing nothing under the tunic, only bare flesh.

Solas traces the lines of the tree branches that curve around my shoulder, and I shiver. I forget that they are there, sometimes. They are part of my vallaslin and not. They reach across my back; the tree roots itself at the base of my spine.

He lifts me again, cradling me against him. This time he turns, stepping over the puddles of our tunics on the balcony, carrying me into my room where the fire is as warm as the mountain night is cold, and he kisses me, deeper this time, unhurried but insatiable, catching my bottom lip with his teeth.

When we reach my bed, he lowers me gently onto it, and I slide backward even as he moves forward, his knee between my legs. He reaches up and lifts the wolf jawbone from his chest, leaving the amulet where it sits just beneath the hollow of his throat. Solas places the jawbone on the bedside table and returns.

“Three taps,” he says. “No matter the reason. Three taps, and I will stop. I will do the same for you.”

Heat pools at my core. I nod to him.

“And if I don’t want you to stop?” I ask.

His eyes glow.

In answer, his fingers tuck into the waistband of my breeches, his thumbs weaving through the laces. Heat sends tendrils out from that spot. My hips lift against that light pressure of his hands at the space where my legs meet my pelvis. He raises himself on his knees between my legs, then bends. He catches the end of the tie in his teeth and tugs, and in one smooth movement of his thumbs in the laces, loosens my breeches enough to pull them off. His fingertips catch my smalls as well, and he bares my skin to the air with every inch.

I lift myself enough so he can pull them off, and slowly, so slowly, he moves backward to reach my legs, slides them until they are at my knees.

He stops, moving over on the bed to straighten my legs. I am half sitting, leaning back on my hands. My breeches are gathered at my knees, tying them loosely together.

Solas holds my eyes, his hands going to his own laces, and I want to reach for him, but he is looking at me, and never before I met him would I have said that eyes so grey could hold such fire.

I can see him straining against the laces of his breeches, and my breath comes faster. He is out of them in moments, fully naked, kneeling above me on my bed.

“Sathan, vhenan,” I say.

I am not sure what I am asking for. We have waited for this. I am in no rush. I am desperate for him. I let the urgency of my body bathe me in desire.

He stretches out beside me, leaning me fully back against my bed, and then his left leg loops over me, pinning me beneath him. He is so beautiful. I do touch him now, reaching up to his waist, my thumbs brushing against the bones of his hips, the ridge of muscle slanting down.

Solas leans down, catching my lips, and I feel him against my stomach, so hard that I pull him closer, closer, kissing his lips, tugging his bottom lip with my teeth as he did with mine. His mouth leaves my lips and skirts the line of my jaw, finding the soft, sensitive spot where it meets my neck, his lips leaving trails of ice and fire down my skin.

His hand traces a path down the other side of my throat, my collarbone, the swell of my breast, his thumb flicking over my nipple, then farther down, farther. He holds himself for a moment, rising to his knees, his long fingers idly stroking the length of his cock.

When his hand leaves, reaching below himself, between my still-tied legs, I replace his hand with my own, touching him, and he shudders with pleasure even as his fingers find me, light touch on slickness. He cups me in his hand, covering my heat with his own, and my fingers stroke him, my thumb finding the sensitive cleft of skin on the underside of his cock. His breath sucks in, and I frame him there, between four fingers and thumb, soft movements. He is so soft to the touch, hard and silken. My thumb finds a droplet of moisture, and I smooth it down the length of him.

“Da’lath’in.” He moans my endearment like it is the sweetest torture.

His finger delves between my folds, and this time it is my breath that hisses in as he finds my opening.

“Show me what you like, vhenan,” he whispers, so I do.

I place my hand atop his, pressing against his middle finger so that it dips inside of me, watching his eyes. Our mana together is tantalising, surrounding us, swirling together. I remember being with Datishan, and while I felt our mana then too, it was nothing like this. Desire thrums through it between Solas and I, responding as we respond, telling me that he feels the wetness of me and the feel of it pushes him closer. His mana pulses with his wanting. I pull his finger along the dip beneath my clit until the pad of his finger rests against it. I move it in slow circles, once, twice, three times, and then I pull my hand away, and he continues.

Looking up at him, I lose my breath. My hand finds him again, exploring the length of him, and when I murmur the same question he asked me, he shakes his head in that way of his and says, “You are perfect.”

His words find a home in me, deep, seeking a still and sacred place where nothing will dislodge them.

His finger still circles me, and my hips push against him, my breath coming faster.

I can hardly think, but I know what I want. I tap him three times, and his finger immediately stills.

Solas watches me, not moving, a question on his face.

“Garas, vhen’an’ara, aman na'mis,” I say.

“Ir’on, da’lath’in,” he says, the question answered. His voice drops to a lower register, almost a purr. “Aman ara’mis.”

Hearing him say those words almost nudges me over the edge in spite of the stillness of his hand on my clit. I have learned to read his face, and when he moves to the side, pulling my breeches the rest of the way off and freeing my feet, for a moment we hover there, not touching, our eyes locked on one another as if time has ceased to have meaning.

Solas moves first, nudging my legs apart, lowing himself to me and leaning on one arm.

“Isalan,” he breathes.

My vision goes hazy.

Heat. Hard heat presses at my opening, and I watch a war play out on his face, feeling his desire through his mana, knowing he wants to thrust all the way in in one stroke.

But Solas and I are like creatures.

He positions himself between my legs, barely inside me. His arms snake over mine, and I let my hands fall on his shoulders as his hands cradle my face.

 _Look at me_ , I want to say, but I don’t have to. He is.

His eyes are liquid smoke, endless.

Slowly, he pushes into me. I feel the ridge of him against the pleasure spot just inside me, and I make a low noise that hums in my chest. Solas does not speed up. In this moment, we are one, and we are present, and though need crashes through me with an urgency bordering on desperation, what I need more is this. Him. That he seems to need the same is heady and beckoning.

“Ilaana.” My name leaves his lips in what is nearly a sigh as he finally finds the end of me, the thumb of his right hand brushing the ridge of my cheekbone.

We hang suspended like that for an eternity. For only a heartbeat.

Solas doesn’t break eye contact as he starts to move, first with delicious slick slowness, and then faster, and I hover at the edge of my own climax. He moves in waves like the sea, slow swells that lift me up higher, closer, and breaking rushes that make me cling to him, digging my nails into his back.

It is then I realise he is doing this on purpose, pulling me closer and then letting it slake.

He sees the dawning in my eyes and a wicked smile appears on his face. “It takes skill and preparation to reach the summit together, vhenan, and I am not yet ready for this to end.”

I lose myself in the movements of our bodies.

Our pleasure rolls in counterpoints, and when I loop one leg over him and flip him onto his back, his face lights with surprise that transforms immediately to heat. Seeing him below me, the amulet I gave him shining back at me, I feel suddenly dizzy.

He watches me move with hunger, lifting his hips to meet me, pushing himself deep inside me with every rock of my own. He sits up, pulling my legs until I wrap them around his waist again, and I can feel his pulse inside my body. Solas splays his hand against my hip, his thumb dipping to my clit.

I cannot move much where I sit, and he knows it. His thumb circles slowly until my back arches, and gasping I struggle for the edge that is so close, so close, so close—

Solas stops.

“Vhenan!” The word is almost a curse on my tongue, and he laughs, a full laugh, a warm laugh that chases away anything farther than the borders of my bed.

“You are marvellous to watch, da’lath’in,” he murmurs, and in a heartbeat he presses me backward, moving atop me once more.

“As are you.” My entire body throbs with denied release. “Isalan, Solas, isalan.”

“I know, vhenan.” The wicked smile is gone, a softer one in its place.

If I didn’t know he was as desperate as I am, if I couldn’t tell by the vibrating resonance of his mana against mine that he wants to shatter into a million pieces of perfect crystal, I would go mad.

Solas thrusts deep into me, letting me pull him close up against me. My hips buck against his, and a low moan rumbles through him, into me as he speeds his movements. His body grows tense against my fingers. His eyes capture mine.

And then he slows once more, his own breath ragged and reaching. His left hand slides between us, his thumb stroking my clit as he continues to move.

I am not certain I will survive if he stops again, and pleasure rises around us like a tide. I tighten beneath him, and his gaze is hooded, breathless, ravenous.

“Ir’on, da’lath’in,” he says.

I cannot look away from him. Every stroke inside me is tortuous with its heat, and in seconds I teeter on the edge, skimming the surface of release with every heartbeat. And he is with me.

My eyes are open as his mouth meets mine, and the wave of pleasure breaks over us both. My vision showers into bright points of light even as I feel the familiar cool wave of his barrier rush over me and—oh, Creators, _inside_ me—along with the hot pulse of his own climax filling me.

And it doesn’t stop. We move against each other, our lips making a rain of kisses until finally our bodies release the tension they’ve been holding, and his weight atop me is more comforting than any blanket.

Solas lays his head in the crook of my neck, his breath still quick. Together our heartbeats flutter in counterpoint, almost a vibration.

I wrap him in my arms, pulling him close to me. My vision still swims, and every few heartbeats there is a bright light that flashes in my mind.

“Ar lath ma, da’lath’in,” he murmurs into my throat.

“Ar lath ma, vhen’an’ara.” I kiss the crown of his head, leaning my cheek against his skin.

Sleep usually evades me, but here, now, somehow the world is ending, but my life is full, and I drift away with him still inside me.

He meets me in the Fade after all.

He shines bright, brighter. We find a dream in a mountain vale, surrounded by wildflowers, and he reaches for me again and again.

I am home.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Solas is so much about choice, so much about free will, that I cannot see him as anything but an absolute embodiment of enthusiastic consent. That influences much of how I wrote this scene. I also needed my Inquisitor not to be shy in bed. She is shy in general, but she knows her body, and she is comfortable with sex. More importantly, she is comfortable with him.
> 
> Also her back tattoo is mine because a friend remarked that Mythal's vallaslin is very similar, and that is very correct--and I got it before I played the game, so...yep. Anyway!
> 
> I hope you all enjoy the erm...barrier method of contraception.
> 
> Okay, I'm going to run away now and hide. BYE.
> 
> Translations:
> 
> Isalan na, vhen’an’ara = I need (romantic and sexual connotation) you, desire of my heart (vhen’an’ara is an endearment slightly stronger than “vhenan”)
> 
> Ane ‘ma da’lath’in = you are my da’lath’in (my openhearted one)
> 
> Lasa ar’an alas’nira aron fen’en = poetic way of saying “let us fuck” (I hope you’ve seen Zach and Miri Make a Porno. Literally, it means something like “let us dance like the wolves” which I had to include because of his Satinalia extra gift, which in that context is a bit more erotic than poor wee Ilaana meant it at the time.
> 
> Vera em su tarasyl = agreeing with the previous statement, literally “take me to the sky”. They’re both being poetic, romantic wee babbies, bless them. Mythal enaste.
> 
> Sathan = please
> 
> Isalan = I need/lust
> 
> Garas, vhen’an’ara, aman na'mis = a more romantic way of saying “put your dick in me”, literally “come, sheathe your sword in me.”
> 
> Ir’on = very good/very well
> 
> Aman ara’mis = response to the above, aka “I will sheathe my sword in you”
> 
> Excuse me while I go run away and blush forever. Thanks to FenxShiral for giving us the words to make everybody blush.


	37. Wisdom is Knowing When to Wake

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The world does not wait for lovers, no matter how long they have waited themselves.

Morning finds me in a cocoon of warmth.

Solas’s arms hold me against his chest—when did we trade places in the night?—and he is already awake.

“My love,” he says when I tilt my head to look up at him.

The serpentstone amulet rests directly in the hollow of his throat right now, and it moves ever-so-slightly with his pulse.

“You’re here,” I say sleepily.

A small flash of some emotion crosses his face and is gone before I can place it. The crease between his brows is there.

“I would not have left you, vhenan,” he murmurs. After a moment where my heart thuds in my chest, he goes on. “Before, when—in the Fade the first time—I was caught off-guard. You gave me time to think, and I have thought. I would not be here otherwise.”

I trace my finger over a cluster of freckles on his pale chest. There is something that goes unsaid here, something I am certain we both know.

And right now, it doesn’t matter.

I roll slightly, onto my stomach, one leg between his, resting my chin on my hands folded on his chest.

“Whatever happens, I never want anything from you that you are not wholeheartedly willing to give,” I say simply. “I would never want to convince someone to love me or to be with me.”

He smiles, raising a hand to tuck a bit of hair back from my face like he’s done it a thousand times before.

“You are wise, da’lath’in. Content yourself with the knowledge that you have done nothing to put undue pressure on me. To the contrary, you have given me the space and time I asked, and if I took more than expected, it was only out of respect for you.” Solas pauses, his hand still stroking my hair. “Know also that loving you is as easy for me as finding the Fade. That has never been in question. These are uncertain times. It is easy to think on everything that could possibly go wrong instead of allowing oneself to take genuine pleasure where we find it.”

“Wisdom is knowing when to wake,” I say automatically, then flush. I don’t know if those words were Cole’s or Solas’s friend’s.

They must have been Cole’s, because Solas simply smiles. “True words.”

I shift myself forward, my sleepy morning haze giving way to something close to giddiness. Solas is here, in my bed, his arms around me, and he is not turning away.

I kiss him, because I can, because he is here. Because I think we are like in another way, that he will give a thing as much thought as he can, but once he decides, it is done.

I kiss him, because he has decided, and he kisses me back for the same reason.

My body is deliciously sore, achy in those secret muscles that I somehow don’t abuse with all of my walking, riding, fighting, and jumping off too-high rocks. But after a night of lovemaking, they are going to be a constant reminder.

Beyond the reminder, my body is stirring again, and so is his. My leg is still between Solas’s legs, and he is pressing against my hip as I kiss him, growing warmer and harder with every passing second.

I hear footsteps only an instant before the knock, and the knock happens as the door _opens_.

“Good morning, Inquisit— _oh_!”

I freeze, staring at Solas with what must be absolute horror. It’s Leliana. She always briefs me in the morning with my breakfast. We’ve overslept, and then some. She never waits for me to invite her in, because I told her not to.

Mythal enaste, I’m going to hear about this in the war room.

We’re still half-covered by the bed’s coverlets, but that leaves the other half, and she has certainly seen more of me than she meant to.

I make myself turn to look at her. She isn’t even _blushing_. Leliana stands halfway up the stairs, politely averting her eyes, but she’s smirking.

Oh, Creators.

“Good morning,” I say in as even a tone as possible, but I’ve got to be redder than Leliana’s hair. “Perhaps you could return in fifteen minutes?”

“Of course, Inquisitor. My apologies. I will return, and in future I will wait to be invited in.”

“No apology necessary,” I say. Solas is shaking slightly beneath me. He’s laughing, or trying very, very hard not to. “The fault was mine for not…”

What, posting a _do not disturb_ sign?

“I will return, and I will instruct Elera to leave your breakfast tray by the door on the landing.”

“Thank you,” I say, and it’s almost a squeak.

The door closes a moment later, and Solas bursts out laughing. I turn back to look at him.

I love hearing him laugh, even though right now it’s mostly at my expense. His laugh is fuller than the moon at its brightest, and richer than the deepest midnight sky.

“If we had any intent of secrecy, I think it’s safe to say that ship has sailed,” I say. But he doesn’t seem upset.

“Considering people’s…thoughtful comments since my return, I think secrecy was already out of the question.” He is smiling widely at me, but he sobers after a moment. “You are under quite a lot of scrutiny, and there could be complications.”

“I told you it was worth the risk, and I meant it,” I tell him firmly, then add in a softer tone, “ _You_ are worth the risk, ‘ma vhenan.”

His face is unguarded. His eyes’ sparkle shifts to something headier, and he pulls me up against him.

“Fifteen minutes is not enough time to wake up with you properly,” he says, rolling me over onto my back and nudging my legs apart.

Solas eases himself backward, his hands running down the sides of my ribcage to my hips. I realise what he’s doing perhaps half a second before he lowers his mouth to me, drawing one hand down to slide into my opening at the same time.

“Solas,” I gasp his name, my nerves alight.

His tongue finds my clit just as his finger strokes deeply into me, pulling against the sensitive spot along my inner wall, and my legs tense.

After our night in the Fade, I would half-expect myself to be completely spent, but my body responds to his touch with such hunger, I am at the precipice in what feels like seconds.

His tongue makes the same slow circles I showed him, and when he draws my clit into his mouth all the sudden, I buck up against him, straining for release.

Naturally, he stops.

My entire body cries out in protest, and I squirm against the rumpled bedclothes.

“We shall have to settle for an…improper waking, it seems,” he says.

For a moment, I just stare at him. I think my brain has already given up on today. It takes me a minute to recover some of my breath and assuage a bit of my…discomfort.

He kneels back at the foot of my bed, facing off with me.

I rise up on my elbows. “I am going to get revenge, you know.”

“I will treasure it, vhenan.” Solas puts his hands out to me, and I scramble to a sitting position to take them.

He pulls me off the bed and spins me so my back is against him. I can still feel him, hard against my ass. He lowers his lips to the juncture of my neck and shoulder and kisses me.

My mark flares a little, and he takes my hands in his, holding them at chest level. He leans his chin upon the shoulder he just kissed.

“Does it pain you, da’lath’in?”

“No,” I say. “Not anymore.”

“Good. Tell me if that changes.”

Our shirts are still out on the balcony, covered with a light layer of frost. Reluctantly, I pull away from Solas to fetch them.

It’s a simple thing to warm and dry them with magic, and when I return, Solas is perched at the end of my bed with his breeches already on, holding his wolf jawbone.

I kneel with one leg on either side of him, holding his tunic. His belt must be somewhere. He gives me an amused smile and obediently puts his arms out to shrug his tunic over his head, the jawbone in one hand.

I take the jawbone from him then and place it around his neck.

“I love this,” I tell him, running my finger along the edge of the teeth.

“I love you,” he says.

“I will never grow tired of hearing you say that,” I murmur. “Ar lath ma, vhen’an’ara.”

I am still fully nude, straddling him. After a moment, I realise that if I don’t move, I will likely leave…evidence on his tunic where my very naked bits are positioned.

When I say that, he laughs again. “I am not worried, vhenan.”

As if to punctuate that, he kisses me. I wish that I could tell Leliana to just go away, that I could spend today here, undisturbed, just me and Solas. We’ve waited so long.

He seems to feel it in my kisses, and he cradles my head between his hands.

“We have time,” he says when the kiss ends. “I will be with you when we go to the Western Approach this time. I will not leave you to face that alone.”

I run my hands over his scalp, brushing the tips of his ears. He closes his eyes when I do, and I love seeing the way my touch leaves goosebumps everywhere it goes upon his body.

“Ma serannas, vhenan,” I say.

I have to pry myself off his lap, reluctant to be away from his touch. Solas seems to sense it, and as I dress, he stays with me, running a hand over my arm or with a hand on my lower back.

When I am dressed for the day’s business, I trot down the stairs to find my breakfast tray on the landing, and I start blushing again, bringing the tray back in with me. Leliana must have also told Elera to bring enough for two.

I love that woman. But I’m probably going to hate her the second I’m cornered with Josephine and Cullen.

Oh, dear Creators.

“You are adorable when you blush, da’lath’in,” Solas says when I sit beside him on the chaise lounge with the tray on the low table in front of us. “Were you hoping to keep our relationship private?”

“I don’t even know. Until yesterday, I had convinced myself you thought of me as a friend. The kind you don't wake up in the same bed with.” I think for a moment, about what it might be like to have to hide. “I am a private person, but not one prone to hiding. There is a difference between privacy and secrets; I suppose I hope to find the line between them.”

After a few minutes of eating in silence, I chuckle.

Solas looks at me, one eyebrow raised.

“You said people approached you when you returned—am I right in guessing they expressed relief on my behalf?”

“Yes,” Solas says wryly. “They perhaps went as far to say you had been despondent in my absence.”

“Oh.” _Despondent_? Really? But I suppose they are right.

He sighs. “I apologise, Ilaana. In spite of my grief, I could have sent word. I was…confused. For a time. And as I said, it has been a long time since I could trust someone. Of all people, I ought to have trusted you. I will work on it.”

“Thank you,” I tell him. His words loosen something tight that has been with me since we tried to save his friend.

“I told my friend about you,” he says suddenly. “It was adamant that I ought not neglect what I feel for you. I wish—I wish I’d had the chance to introduce you.”

I place my hand over his. The change in him since two days ago is remarkable. It feels fragile, new.

“I would have loved that,” I tell him earnestly.

Leliana’s knock sounds at the door, and true to her word, this time she waits.

“Come in,” I call to her.

She opens the door and enters, coming up the stairs on her silent feet. She smiles when she sees the two of us, and I glance beyond her at the rumpled bed. Whoops.

Leliana pulls up a chair and starts going over the plans for today, for the war room and for the assault on the keep.

Solas stays until she is done, and her eyes twinkle a little every time she glances our way, though the subject is grim.

I am thankful, at least, that if anyone were to walk in on us, it was her.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really couldn't resist.
> 
> He is not being careful in this chapter. He is being almost reckless. He has made a decision, and he has committed to it for now. Careful will come later.
> 
> Sigh.


	38. Adamant

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The hole in Ilaana's memories is meant to finally heal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is hella long, yikes and sorry. It was really important to me for the theme of this first erm...book of this apparent series.

Adamant.

The assault on the fortress happens in flashes.

 

Trebuchets fire onto a keep that has withstood the ages since the Second Blight.

Fire explodes into the ramparts.

I am surrounded by Inquisition forces carrying Inquisition banners, all of them with fervent pride in their eyes and my name on their lips.

Cullen is at my side. He guides them with the same steady hand from Haven.

Solas is near, always near. I hear his voice in my mind, over and over since we came to the Western Approach. On the advance to the keep, we found a cave where the Venatori were mechanically mining red lyrium from the bodies of captured travellers and merchants. _Detestable_ , he said. Everything about this fits that word.

My body is tense, electric. His presence gives me comfort.

Hawke is here, and Alistair. Hawke’s agitation is more and more with every passing moment. Her sister is a Warden. I know she sees Bethany’s face in every blank-eyed mage we pass.

 

Inquisition soldiers fall beside us, shot by Wardens on the battlements. Crushed by rocks flung from above.

They look to me when they die.

I carry every one of their faces with me when we advance.

 

The battering ram smashes through the fortress door.

Cullen runs to me. “There is too much resistance. The ladders cannot gain purchase,” he says. “If you can clear a path—”

“I will,” I tell him. “Keep our people safe.”

He gives a sharp nod and turns away. He carries their faces too.

 

Demons fight alongside those sworn to defend Thedas against the Blight.

The stench of burning flesh and brimstone and that strange, half-electric, half-magic scent of the Fade permeates the building. It is all overlaid with blood.

 

Endless stairs. Endless turning. Adamant is a fortress and a labyrinth.

We stumble upon a pocket of Wardens fighting their own. Some fight with tears streaming down their cheeks. Some shout, still trying to reason with their fellows, who seem to neither see nor hear their former comrades.

I tell them to fall back to safety. It is a kindness I am not certain they deserve.

Cassandra and Varric fight beside me and Solas, their faces reflecting back the horror that appears around every corner.

 

And finally, Warden Commander Clarel.

She slits the throat of her own old friend.

Erimond gloats beside her.

I speak. Hawke speaks. Alistair speaks. We all try to convince her of Erimond’s treachery.

In the end, we succeed.

We watch as she realises the enormity of her folly.

We watch as Erimond creates a rift that reveals an gargantuan spider demon.

We watch as he summons Corypheus’s pet archdemon into the heart of Grey Warden history.

There are no words.

“Help the Inquisitor!” is the last thing I hear Clarel say before she sprints after the archdemon.

 

Again we climb.

Stairs, more stairs, always more stairs.

The corrupted dragon dogs out steps, lashing us with its blighted fire that hits the ground like shattering glass.

“Steady, da’lath’in,” Solas says to me as Clarel’s back appears to us just as she rounds a corner onto the top of Adamant fortress.

“You!” she yells at someone. Erimond. “You destroyed the Grey Wardens!”

“You did that to yourself, you stupid bitch.”

Clarel responds to Erimond with a bolt of lightning from her fist that sends him flying across the stone.

Wind whips around us. Unnatural wind. It smells of decay and death.

Calling a powerful woman a bitch—the last defence of an inferior man when confronted with someone who has bested him.

Clarel advances on him.

“All I did was dangle a little power in front of your eyes, and you couldn’t wait to get your hands bloody.” He is lying on the stone roof of the keep, clutching his side.

Clarel’s next lightning sends him sprawling even further. He curls into the foetal position.

“You could have served a new god!” Erimond whimpers.

“I will never serve the Blight!”

The archdemon lands.

Clarel vanishes into its gaping mouth before I can do anything.

Blood sprays out from between its teeth. It launches itself into the air, shaking its head back and forth like a cat with a mouse.

None of us move. The dragon throws her to the stone at our feet, advancing upon her. We all back away, but there is a precipice behind us.

“In war, victory. In peace, vigilance.” Clarel puts her hands to the wounds at her core, her mana blazing to life through the power of her blood.

A massive explosion cuts through the stone.

 

Solas. He is at the edge. I run to him, grabbing his hand. He throws us forward with a mind blast, but the stone is crumbling away behind us. Hawke and Cassandra and Varric scramble, the sound of tearing stone melding with the maelstrom of the shrieking archdemon’s cries.

I hear a yell behind me. Alistair. The stone has given way beneath his feet.

With an anguished shout, I drop Solas’s hand and run to Alistair, grabbing his wrist with both hands and yanking him toward me.

But it is too late. Even as I turn back, I know it. The entire platform has broken loose before Cassandra and—

The ground is tilting and—

We are falling through the air and—

We are all going to die unless I can do something and—

My mark flares to life, and I thrust it out in front of me toward the ground. A rift slices through the air.

We fall into it.

 

I am staring at the ground.

Floating. Right side up, but the ground is at my head.

I am in the Fade.

I reach out a hand, willing myself to land.

I crash to the ground.

“Well. This is unexpected.” Alistair is standing at a right degree angle on a pillar of stone above my head.

Hawke is positioned similarly on my right. “We were falling…If this is the afterlife, the Chantry owes me an apology. This looks nothing like the Maker’s bosom.”

“No. This is the Fade,” Solas says. He is right in front of me, easily comfortable as he always is. “The Inquisitor opened a rift. We came through…and survived. I never thought I would find myself here physically. Look—the Black City. Almost close enough to touch.”

His face is full of wonder, and I cannot help but share it with him. I don’t remember the last time I did this—it may as well be my first time.

“This is incredible,” I murmur.

“What spirit commands this place?” he asks. “I have never seen anywhere like it.”

Standing above me, Hawke and Alistair look much less like they find this to be something amazing, other than the happy fact that we are not dead.

“It’s not how I remember the Fade either,” Hawke says. I shoot her a glance. I didn’t know she’d been here. Consciously, anyway. “Perhaps it’s because we’re here physically, instead of just dreaming. The stories say you walked out of the Fade at Haven—was it like this, Ilaana?”

“I don’t know,” I tell her truthfully. “I still can’t remember the last time I did this.”

A small lie of omission. I don’t have to glance at Solas to feel him watching me. None of the others in the Inquisition know that I’m a Dreamer, though Dreamers don't walk here in the flesh. It’s strange to use that word to classify myself, but it must be true by now. Then again, for all they know Solas is an expert in the Fade, I’m not certain they realise he is a Dreamer, either.

“Whatever happened at Haven,” Hawke says, “we can’t assume we’re safe now. That huge demon was right on the other side of that rift Erimond was using, and there could be others.”

Alistair chimes in. “In the real world, the rift with the demon was nearby, in the main hall. Can’t we get out the same way?”

“It beats waiting around for demons to find _us_ , right?” I say. “There. Let’s go.”

For once, I am almost…comfortable. Nothing about this should be comfortable, but I am alive, and the others are all alive, and Solas is with me. If I had to face this at all, this is the only way I’d choose to.

Cassandra and Varric follow, silent, staring around.

“This is fascinating,” Solas says. “It is not the area I would have chosen, of course, to physically walk within the Fade.”

“Right. You like it here. Isn’t that wonderful?” Varric opens his mouth finally, sounding anything but earnest.

“Yes! Literally.” I know Solas heard the derision, but he will not be dampened.

“Solas, you’re the expert,” I say to head off anything else. “Anything helpful?”

He gives me a small smile to tell me he knows why I asked. “The Fade is shaped by intent and emotion. Remain focused, and it will lead you where you wish to go. The demon that controls this area is extremely powerful. Some variety of fear, I would guess. I suggest you remain wary of its manipulations and prepare for what is certain to be a truly fascinating experience.”

This place is strongly controlled by the demon. As we advance, there is a table with a glow around it. When I get close, I feel the memory here, a soul fearing the darkness. Nearby is a candle. With a thought, I place the candle on the table. It glows brighter for a moment, and the presence of fear around it lessens.

Solas sees, and as we continue on, he takes my hand and gives it a squeeze.

He is proud of me.

We pass other oddities, a shattered mirror that looks familiar. It takes me a moment to place it—it is an eluvian. It stops me in my tracks for a bare moment; the ancient elves of Arlathan used the eluvians to travel. They needed no roads. They have mostly been lost, but one was found by Neria Mahariel and her friend Tamlen ten years ago at the very beginning of the Blight. In Varric’s book about Hawke, Merrill had an eluvian herself, perhaps that very one, since she was part of Neria’s clan at the time.

I see Hawke almost trip when she notices it. She knows what it is. She glances at me as if to check, and I give her a slight nod.

I have never asked Solas about the eluvians, but I imagine he knows something of them. It is not something I particularly want the Chantry to discover.

There is little time to think on it. Up the next set of stairs is a figure of a woman in a tall hat and splendid Chantry robes, and the sight of her chases all other thoughts out of my head.

“What? That can’t be.” I turn at the sound of the voice. Alistair is behind me, and he creeps closer, staring.

“I greet you, Warden, and you, Champion.”

Cassandra speaks for the first time since we entered the Fade. “Divine Justinia? Most Holy?”

The woman smiles beatifically. “Cassandra.”

She is familiar to me, somehow.

“I don’t recall the Divine glowing,” Alistair says. “In my experience, that’s something spirits do.”

“You think my survival impossible, yet here you stand alive in the Fade yourselves. In truth, proving my existence either way would require time we do not have,” the Divine says.

“Really?” Hawke says. “How hard is it to answer one question? _I’m_ a human, and you are…?”

For all their comments, I know it is not that simple. One conversation with Cole is enough to show anyone that, or it should be.

“I am here to help you.” The Divine turns to me. “You do not remember what happened at the Temple of Sacred Ashes, Inquisitor.”

“No, I don’t.” The hole in my head, in my memory. I healed the sky, but this hole remains.

Solas steps closer to me, his shoulder brushing mine. I am thankful for him.

“The memories you have lost were taken by the demon that serves Corypheus. It is the nightmare you forget upon waking; it feeds upon memories of fear and darkness, growing fat upon the terror,” says the Divine. “The false calling that terrified the Wardens into making such terrible mistakes? Its work.”

“I’d like to have a few words with this nightmare about that,” Alistair says.

“You will have your chance, brave Warden,” says the Divine. “This place of darkness is its lair.”

Yes, he would. I think of myself, forced to engage the apostates in the Hinterlands, turning my magic against mages who wanted nothing more than to be free. I think of Cassandra and Cullen and Lysette in Haven, fighting against templars so corrupted by red lyrium that they became monsters. And Alistair, Blackwall—fighting Wardens who were about to create an army of demons that would have ushered in a large part of the abomination of a future I witnessed in Redcliffe. The Wardens of Adamant, fighting their fellows with tear-stained faces.

The Wardens are Alistair's people. He will want justice.

“Corypheus seems to have a lot of demons at his disposal. How does he command so many?” I ask.

“I know not how he commands his army of demons. His power may come from the Blight itself, but the nightmare serves willingly, for Corypheus has brought much terror into this world. He was one of the magisters who unleashed the First Blight upon the world, was he not? Every child’s cry as the archdemon circles, every dwarf’s whimper in the Deep Roads—the nightmare has fed well.”

“Can you help us get out of the Fade?” Like with Corypheus, _something_ in me remembers this person.

I do not know if she is truly the Divine, or if she is a spirit, but it doesn’t matter to me. My instinct is to trust her. I think I trusted her before, and I think she helped me.

“That is why I found you. When you entered the Fade at Haven, the demon took a part of you. Before you do anything else, you must recover it. These are your memories, Inquisitor.” Justinia gestures, and four wraiths appear amid the pools of water and stone outcroppings.

We fight them easily, and wisps appear in the air. I reach out my marked hand to them.

_Why are you doing this? You, of all people!_

It is Justinia’s voice, the first Justinia.

_Run while you can! Warn them!_

Then Corypheus: _Bring forth the sacrifice._

When his voice fades, pain blossoms in my mind like a flower made of broken glass. I stumble, nearly falling.

 

Haven.

Justinia is bound by red licking lines of magic, her arms out on either side of her. Fear is etched into her face, horror. She is shaking.

The people holding her are Grey Wardens. Grey Wardens, holding the Divine in place while Corypheus advances.

“Now is the hour of our victory,” Corypheus says.

“Why are you doing this? You, of all people!” Justinia is addressing the Wardens, not Corypheus.

“Keep the sacrifice still,” he says.

The orb is in his hand. It pulses with energy, green and not the sick red from when he wielded it at Haven. He stretches out his hand.

“Someone help me!”

I hear it in front of me, like it’s through the other side of a wall. No, a door. But I can see her memory as much as my own. I feel her fear. It is dry and acidic like bile.

The orb is pulling something from her.

And I feel myself, the dread. I am wandering the conclave, trying to learn what I can for Keeper Deshanna. I have just been scoffed at by a group of mages when I tried to ask a question. I do not understand the humans. I am lost, wandering, trying to find my way out, and then I hear her voice.

Her voice. _Someone help me!_

I feel her fear in her words, and the bloom of magic beyond the door at the end of the corridor, and I run throwing the door open in front of me. There is the Divine, held in midair by ropes of corrupted magic wielded by Grey Wardens. There is…him.

Corypheus. Ten feet tall and pieced together from sinew and red lyrium, holding something that _sings_ to me.

“What’s going on here?” I yell, hoping to distract the Wardens enough that I can do—something. Anything.

And the monster is looking at me.

“We have an intruder,” he says as if I am simply a fly buzzing in his ear. “Slay the elf.”

Justinia swats the orb from his hand. It falls to the floor with a clank. It rolls toward me.

I can feel something in me needing it. I should know this. I should—I reach out with my left hand and pluck it from the ground.

The orb reaches back. Threads of green plunge into my arm, through my veins, through every part of me. My entire body convulses, and Corypheus roars, running at me.

The orb releases a concussive blast, throwing him backward.

 

I am in the Fade.

I am staring at a Grey Warden I barely know.

He is talking to me. “So that mark on your hand. It wasn’t sent by Andraste. It came from that orb Corypheus was using.”

I barely hear what Justinia says in response. They all saw this memory.

My eyes search out Solas’s, and he is staring at me with an intensity I cannot give a name to. I have surprised him yet again.

The Divine walks toward me, and I try to make myself listen.

“When you disrupted his plan, the orb bestowed the Anchor upon you instead,” she says.

“I never thought Andraste did this,” I say softly. “I did this myself. My own actions, which...”

I trail off, frowning. There is still a hole in my head, but it is smaller. Some of it has mended, but not all.

“I heard a voice calling for help,” I say finally. “I tried to help.”

I do not know why the orb sang to me. Perhaps it is only that I am an elf. Perhaps it would call out to any elf. Perhaps.

“And now you may be certain,” Justinia says. “You have recovered some of yourself, but now it knows you are here. I will prepare the road ahead.”

She vanishes.

Behind me, Alistair is talking again, but this time not to me. “What’s wrong, Hawke?”

“I wondered if you might be concerned about the Wardens holding the Divine in that vision. Their actions led to her death.”

“I assumed Corypheus took their minds. You’ve seen it happen before. Come on. You can add it to the things to yell at the Wardens about when we get out of here.”

“Oh, I intend to.” Hawke’s face is a tempest. She will not forget this.

The others debate about the nature of the Divine’s spectre as we move forward, and then the nature of the entity we face in the nightmare.

“Fear is a very old, very strong feeling. It predates love, pride, compassion—every emotion, save perhaps desire. Be wary. The nightmare will do anything in its power to weaken our resolve.”

As always, Solas finds the heart of the matter.

 

“Ah, we have a visitor. Some silly little girl comes to steal the fear I kindly lifted from her shoulders.”

It takes me a moment to realise the booming disembodied voice is talking to me.

“You should have thanked me and left your fear where it lay, forgotten. You think the pain will make you stronger—what fool filled your mind with such drivel? The only one who grows stronger from your fears is me. But you are a guest here in my house, so by all means, let me return what you have forgotten.”

I ignore it.

The hole in my head is no longer a hole. Filled with memories lost, it  _is_ stronger, and I am certainly not weaker or more afraid for it.

“Perhaps I should be afraid, facing the most powerful members of the Inquisition,” it says. “Hawke is here, in danger because of you again, Varric.”

“Just keep talking, Smiley,” Varric mutters.

“Your Inquisitor is a fraud, Cassandra. Yet more evidence there is no Maker and all your faith has been for naught.” This demon obviously knows where to aim.

“Die in the Void, demon.” Then again, Cassandra isn’t one to stand there and get hit.

Solas is agitated next to me. I wonder if he is anticipating what this nightmare will say to him. We fight through more demons, rage demons, wraiths.

The next words of the nightmare make me trip over a rock.

“Dirth ma, harellan.” This time it takes me a moment to realise the voice is _not_ speaking to me. It’s speaking to Solas. “Ma banal enasalin. Mar solas ena mar din.”

“Banal nadas,” Solas replies coolly.

My heart gives a thud. Of the two of us to be labelled harellan, I did not expect it to be him.

The line that began at Redcliffe grows longer. He cares for nothing but victory. His pride will be his death.

And Solas's response: nothing is inevitable.

There is grim silence for a time. Someday, he will tell me himself.

“Did you think you mattered, Hawke?” the nightmare says suddenly, shaking me out of my thoughts. “Did you think anything you ever did mattered? You couldn’t even save your city. How could you expect to strike down a god? Merrill is going to die, just like your family and everyone you ever cared about.”

I happen to be looking in her direction as the nightmare speaks. Her face is pure anguish.

“Well,” she says. “That’s going to grow tiresome quickly.”

I swallow, moving to stand closer to her, at least enough to put a hand on her shoulder.

She looks up, startled, but after a moment, she gives me a wan smile.

 

Divine Victoria is ahead of us.

More wraiths.

“Trust what you have seen,” she tells me. “The mark is the needle that pulls the thread, as well as the key. You are the thread. It is the key that locks or unlocks the Fade. It allows you to walk here and survive. It is part of you now, and it can never be removed.

“The minds of mankind are made real here. Their hopes, their loves, and their fears. What changes their world also changes this one, and yours are footsteps that move mountains in both. Tread carefully, Inquisitor. This road is more treacherous than you know. The nightmare steals fears, yes, but without fear and pain and failure, we cannot learn. We cannot grow, as you cannot grow until you recover all that has been taken from you.”

There are more of my memories. She shows me the way.

 

I am running for my life. Fearlings swarm behind me, and Divine Justinia is ahead of me.

“Keep running!” I bellow at her.

We climb, endlessly upward, plagued by fearlings below, reaching, gaining.

Justinia is at the top, at the rift, at the Breach in Haven in the crater Corypheus left behind.

She grabs my hand, pulls me to safety.

Then she stumbles.

I catch her arm. She looks at me, anguish and gratitude and hope in her face.

She lets go. “Go!”

She soars backward, away from me. I will never catch her. The fearlings are about to crest the stairs.

I dive through the rift.

I land on my face in the gravel.

I try to crawl forward, toward the soldiers running toward me.

The ground meets me.

 

“It was you. They thought it was Andraste sending me from the Fade,” I say to the Divine. “But it the Divine behind me. Then you—she—died.”

The spirit sighs. “Yes. I am sorry if I disappoint you.”

“I can only speak for myself,” I tell her, “but I am far from disappointed. Twice you have helped me, I think. You saved my life at the Breach, and now you have helped me restore my memories. There has been a hole in my head since Haven. It is gone, filled with what was stolen from me, because of you.”

Beside me, Solas is listening. I think Cassandra and Varric—maybe even Alistair and Hawke—disapprove of me in this moment, but I don’t care.

I don’t care when Hawke and Alistair start playing a game of “who’s the worst” tug of war.

I don’t care when we press on through the endless curving paths of the Fade.

We find a graveyard, a strange thing, barely Andrastian since they cremate their dead. There are stones with our names on them, the fears of everyone in my party.

Cassandra, helplessness. Cole, despair. Sera, nothing. I do not think it is that she fears nothing, but that she fears nothing _ness_. Dorian, temptation. Varric, becoming his parents. The Iron Bull, madness. Vivienne, irrelevance. Blackwall, himself.

And Solas. Solas, my love, my companion, my friend—he fears dying alone.

I wonder if in some part his fear and Blackwall's are, in essence, the same.

I don’t care when we move forward, away from that eerie little place. I don’t care that I can sense everyone’s fear here, no matter how hard they try to hide it. Fear is not weakness, and none of my friends are weak.

I don’t care what they think about it. I take Solas’s hand and hold it.

 

The spirit is, in the end, what saves us. Again.

I know when I first set eyes on the nightmare in the flesh that there is no way we will best it. There is no way we can kill this thing. It makes ants of us with its vastness.

It is our spirit companion who buys us the time to barely fight past its minion.

She floats toward the nightmare, glowing like the sun. She erupts with the force of an exploding mountain.

It is still almost not enough.

The rift, the way home, it is so close I can almost taste it.

Solas and Cassandra are through, then Varric. Only Alistair and Marian and I remain.

The nightmare leaps between us and the rift.

“We need to clear a path!” Alistair yells.

“Go!” Marian looks to me. “I’ll cover you!”

“No!” Alistair shakes his head at her. “You were right. The Grey Wardens caused this. A Warden must end it.”

Marian stares at him. “A Warden must help them _rebuild_.”

I know even now this decision will be another I have to carry.

And I have no time. I have to get through the rift, back to Adamant. To Solas, to the Inquisition. Corypheus is there. That is no question.

I already know who it has to be. The Creators help me, but I already know.

Merrill cannot lose Marian.

It may not be logical, and I don’t care. It may be because in this short time, I have come to know and respect and care for Marian Hawke. It may be because she loves—truly loves, I can see it in her face when she speaks of her—Merrill Sabrae. Who is too like me, too alone to leave in this world without her love.

“Alistair,” I say. My voice cracks on his name.

He is a hero already. He helped Neria Mahariel end the Blight. He fought by her side. He is Leliana’s friend. I think he is someone I would have liked to know. I think he is someone I already do. I see the loneliness in him. He is like me, too. He knows what it’s like to have to turn away from your own people.

_Who are your people, Ilaana?_

“Inquisitor,” Alistair says. “It has been an honour. For the Wardens!”

He turns. He fights.

I see him fall.

Marian and I leap through the rift.

 

I land in the courtyard in Adamant.

A battle rages, demons fighting Inquisition soldiers.

I raise my marked hand and end it with a gesture.

In this moment,  _I_ feel the whole world change.

The demons fall dead, and the rift vanishes with a booming shower of green.

Again I live where others fall.

They tell me to let the people believe what is not true.

The Wardens ask me what to do.

I tell them to leave Orlais.

I have made Adamant mine.

There is no more hole. Not in the sky, and not in my head.

I am whole.

When I find my tent, I am exhausted and spent.

But I am not alone.

I rest in Solas's arms, where our bodies both still smell of the Fade, and we return there together, in our dreams.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WHEW.
> 
> Thank you all so much for reading this. I honestly have had such a lovely time writing it, and while there will most certainly be more, it will have to wait a little! I wrote the first maybe quarter of this over a couple months and wrote the rest erm...since December. So that's a lot of words! I also finished one of my original novels at the end of December, so I've pretty much been riding the word train for a while. Choo choo.
> 
> I wanted to end this on a note of change, where Ilaana knows herself better and has a path forward. There is much that waits ahead.
> 
> Some of you might have noticed that nothing Cullen really came to a conclusion here, and I'm still not entirely sure what I want to do with that. I've been trying to play a Cullenmance because he is so kind and attractive and flustered and some of the looks he gives Inky are very O_O in the "cold shower now pls" sort of way, but I'm not sure it fits here. I read Solas as someone who is A: not likely to feel particularly threatened by a random human templar, and B: as someone who knows he's going to likely hurt the person he loves most in his current life and thus nihilistically might be like, "Please take care of her" buuuuuut at the same time I might just want to really focus on the two of them. I'm even polyam irl and I seldom date outside my partner.
> 
> Anyhoo! Thank you again for reading. Your comments have given me life. I am really pleased with how this has turned out so far, and I can't wait to obsessively write more for days on end. WHEE.
> 
> Now if you'll excuse me, I need to start a new Solasmance playthrough.

**Author's Note:**

> Eek, thank you for reading.
> 
> Now's probably a decent time to note that my favourite word is "anticipation." I'm demisexual and am writing Ilaana that way (Solas is headcanon demi to me anyway!), hence the slow amp up.
> 
> I'm going to go hide now. (This is my first fic, pls be gentle.)
> 
> Also I am polyam and real bad at monogamy/jealous lovers, so there will almost certainly be an additional romance for Ilaana that is a surprise for even her (with full consent and acknowledgement of all parties), but life is messy and complicated in the lowest stakes of situations, let alone in a world of rampaging dragons and pissed off immortal wannabe gods, so emotions running high and people just going "welp, them's the ropes" doesn't feel out of the realm of probability in my mind. I also dig the polyam concept of people intersecting in different ways with our lives. SO! There's that. They're all a bunch of adorable dum dums anyway. I love them.
> 
> Added note: changed the title, because I think this will become book one in a series of...yikes, probably four, at this rate.
> 
> PS: thank you so much for reading. Writing this is giving me life back, and you lot are fab for indulging me. x


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